


Depths

by TheModernChromatic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-13 04:15:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1212337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheModernChromatic/pseuds/TheModernChromatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you have to experience death to remember how to live. And sometimes love is waiting in the strangest of places, even at the bottom of the ocean. <br/>mermaid!Eren</p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://erebu5.tumblr.com/post/74907049562/are-you-an-angel-xd-this-is-the-best-i">this</a> fanart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can find my tumblr [here](http://themodernchromatic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> ~Cass
> 
> * * *

He could almost describe it as beautiful. A divine serenity. Around him were endless curtains of blues and greens, billowing in the sunlight like ladies' skirts in the wind. The light itself moved with it, distorted from its hard-lined rays into something loose. Fluid. It would've been very beautiful, too, and for a moment he thought he should just give up and appreciate it. It was considerably more beautiful than anything he would've imagined for himself in the end. But the curtains clung to him, not an inch left untouched. It stung salt into his eyes and made his clothes balloon out around him, and perhaps they would've dragged him down, but they were resisting the pull, floating up away from him like his hair. No, there were other things to pull him down, things to make the beautiful scene a mocking nightmare.

The beautiful curtains of blue that clung to him rested on his face, taunting. He knew he could only hold his breath for so long before his body would react and try to inhale. Up was not an option; he'd cut his wrists and let in the stinging salt trying to undo his bonds, and his ankles were no better. Bound to them, though, were chains, not rope. A careful calculation on his killer's part, yes. On the end of the chain hung death, probably a hundred pounds of it. It was enough to make the descent agonizingly slow without giving him any chance of resisting.

He closed his eyes against the burning salt, letting out more of the last breath he'd taken. He sank like sand falling from an hourglass, his time simply draining away. Yes, this was it. Resignation coursed through his veins and he allowed himself to go limp. Releasing the last of his held breath, he opened his eyes to watch the bubbles float up like little blue pearls, perchance to catch a last glimpse of the sunlight bending in the waves.

Drowning, he thought, was at least very beautiful.

***

Were you to ask him for any advice in life, he would tell you to pay your debts. Or at least, not to take in strays saddled with a lot of debt they can't pay. He'd figured it was a harmless deal, something temporary while the foul-mouthed thug got back on his feet. It was far from that, though. And his charity had only been able to go so far before he lost his composure and kicked him out. But, he was also a man with a heavy conscience and poor foresight, to say the least. It became a scenario of 'wrong place, wrong time' as he'd stumbled into the warehouse he'd found the man by.

Lo and behold, it landed him in the hands of some less-than-savory characters demanding to know where his little pet thug had gone, but of course he didn't know and he'd seen their operations, knew too much. When they'd had enough of him, they'd shipped him out into the San Francisco bay, their men armed to the teeth. He figured they'd shoot him and get it over with, dump his body in the bay and call it a day. That was what the weight was for, wasn't it? To keep the body--his body--from floating up? And his hands were tied for obvious reasons, couldn't have him fighting back, no.

But they'd simply thrown him overboard without a bullet to mercy him first. The weight went over the side and he'd felt his stomach drop as his feet went after. He'd considered himself a strong man in life, but even the strongest man would have a hell of a time trying to keep his lungs from becoming water ballons with a hundred pound weight tied to his ankles.

In the end, he didn't blame the thug, Levi, as he'd called himself. In fact, he'd wished him well, hoped he'd been able to get away from men like that after all. What he cursed was his own stupidity. He'd known there wasn't a chance in hell he'd find a man like that who knew how to hide when he didn't want to be found. Perhaps he could've even gotten himself away from the men who killed him, and he was worrying for nothing. But he, Erwin Smith, attorney at law, thirty-year-old, tax-paying, white, male, was about as stealthy and resourceful as a newborn foal. In the end, he'd had only his own charity to blame.

It was hard for him, dying. Those first few seconds, after hitting the water with eyes and jaw clenched had him hoping he was dreaming. But dreams were never quite so heavy and he couldn't recall a single one with the sting of salt in his eyes and nostrils. The dread of death settled in, slow and creeping, and he'd opened his eyes wishing a bullet would follow him down. He'd wanted to scream. But he was smart enough not to. Or maybe stupid enough; after all, holding in his breath would only prolong his already-forfeit life. In the end, death was just something he knew he had to accept, and at least his was beautiful, albeit a bit wetter than he'd hoped for.

When he peered up into what he hoped would be sunlight for the last time, he saw instead a large and darkened creature in the way and for a moment, he panicked. He wouldn't get to see the sun, no. The return of the salt in his eyes made it hard to see clearly for a moment, though the waning light was also at fault, and briefly he thought the creature to be a shark about to realize his lucky day with some easy prey and he'd choked out a muffled scream with the last his lungs would give him. Inevitably, he inhaled and water filled his lungs, stinging his throat as the thing came closer, but he began to see it clearer as his vision faded away with his life. Four minutes, he knew, before his brain would be too deprived of oxygen to function.

_Are you an angel?_

It had plenty of time to process the creature descending in the sunlight. First glance said shark, for its size and swiftness, but again as he looked his mind said 'man' for the little creature had a curious face and beautiful hair floating around clearly-human features. He wondered if it wasn't too late for him to be saved, but the figure kept a distance, descending with him, silhouetted by the sunlight behind him. Erwin was losing consciousness quickly and as the figure reached out to touch him, as something gentle came up to meet his bleeding cheek, he knew. He let his head loll into the gentle touch, willing his angel to take him away to a place as green as the eyes he'd taken in to be the last thing he ever saw.

***

It came at him in a set of memories. The afterlife, most assuredly. He was six, in his aunt's arms at his grandmother's funeral. She kept a stony face, the brunette blacksheep of his mother's family. She smelled a bit like mint and coconut, but also like something bitter. Of all four daughters, his mother included, he'd always thought her to be the most beautiful, even if she never smiled. In her arms, he peered down at his grandmother in her casket.

"Auntie, I wanna get closer."

She narrowed her dark eyes, framed by long beautiful lashes--a trait he'd later have relayed to him that he'd inherited. As he got closer, he reached out a little hand and set it on the skin on the back of his grandmother's hand, then withdrew it.

"She's cold."

Somehow Erwin knew she would be.

Later on, he sat in his grandfather's lap, having been dumped in the arms of various relatives the entire evening while his mother took care of all of the funeral processions.

"Grandpa, why did granny die?"

"It was her time."

"Did she go to bed on time? Did she exercise? Did she eat all of her vegetables?"

Those were the things mommy said to do, so surely they kept you alive. His grandfather smiled with watering eyes he'd never notice and replied that yes, she had for every question. Erwin gave a tiny 'oh' and began to wonder why people died. When his aunt came to get him, he'd resolved to ask her and made a point of doing so. No one talked to him like she did; she never dumbed down her words or let her tone modulate like a slide whistle. She told the truth and he knew it.

"Auntie, why do people die?"

"We're mortal. Everyone dies. It's just part of being human."

"Everyone?"

"Yes, everyone."

"Where do they go?"

She'd been holding him again, and she shrugged.

"No one knows for sure."

"To heaven? With the angels? And God?"

"Some believe."

"Are angels real?"

God seemed a valid idea, but the others, he'd grown skeptical about. They came to get you when you died? Or they welcomed you there? What did they do that God couldn't?

"No. There aren't any angels."

"Oh."

No angels indeed.

***

He woke violently, coughing and spluttering seawater everywhere. His hair clung to his forehead, wet, but drying salty and stiff. He threw a hand to his his chest, half-convinced he was about to cough up a shriveled lung. When he'd gotten all of the water out of his lungs, rather miraculously and seemingly on his own, he collapsed backwards, his entire respiratory system burning. He begged no one in particular for some water in a raspy voice, his eyes clenched tight against the stinging sun. As he remained on his back, his heartbeat thudded in his ears and a thought occurred to him.

Alive.

He let out a pained groan and opened his eyes, trying to get a look at his surroundings. His eyes took a moment to remember how to see and when they began to work he questioned how well. There wasn't much to see but a few rocks poking out of open water. Beyond that, was more water and the horizon, nothing else. He strained, turning himself around to see bigger rocks behind him, taller than the one he was on, but not quite as wide, and a large cliff off in the distance. He collapsed back onto his rock, mewling at his own stinging throat. His mind swam trying to make sense of the situation.

Drowning. He'd been drowning, out in the middle of the bay with his wrists tied and a weight on his ankles and no hope of ever seeing the sun again and--an angel. There had been an angel, hadn't there? Did that really happen? His raw and bleeding wrists were evidence enough, and his ankles, upon examination, showed thick dark bruises forming, but... He peered around the empty graveyard of rocks and crumpled back down onto the rock for the third time. It was his imagination, he was sure of it. But then, how had he gotten loose?

A small splash to his left alerted him and he blinked his eyes sleepily, warding off an outcome of either sleep or a delayed death. He rolled onto his side, careful to take note of the edge and peered into the array of jagged rocks. He missed it at first glance, a mop of messy brown hair just slightly visible over a nearby rock. A bit of green flashed and the hair disappeared. Erwin stumbled backwards and trying not to have a heart attack to make his death faster.

The head reemerged after a second, peering over the stone again and Erwin tried to calm himself while the mysterious green eyes watched him. His body shook and his dry throat begged for relief but he steadied himself.

"Hey," he began, and the sound of his own raspy voice startled him. The little head dipped behind the rock a little more. "Wait, no. It's okay. You can come out."

He wasn't sure if his wheezing was particularly comforting, but the head came back up a little more. The eyes blinked at him and he extended a hand carefully.

"Did you save me?" He had to speak slowly, his voice horrendously gravelly and his throat burning like it'd been rubbed raw with sandpaper.

The little person did not reply, but rather went back under the water. Erwin's tired brain started whirring, trying to come up with logical explanations for where he was, how he'd gotten there, and who this little person was. Nothing came up, but the little head after a few seconds, entirely too close to his hand.

He withdrew it instinctively and the mysterious little person knit his--Erwin thought it looked like a boy, though its body was still completely submerged--eyebrows together, looking almost disappointed. A little hand popped out of the water and made grabbing motions in his direction. Tentatively, he extended his hand again, wondering if he had the strength to brace himself against the rock should the boy decide to pull him in.

Slender little fingers came up and moved softly over the skin of his hand, curiously digging into the spaces between his fingers. Erwin rubbed his dry eyes and squinted at the hand grabbing his. The fingers ended in sharp little nails, but as they moved over his, he could see thin, membranous webbing between them. He leaned forward to get a closer look, but moved too quickly and the creature disappeared under the water again, definitely not human. He pulled his hand to his eyes and rubbed his fingers together, feeling a slightly slimy residue on them.

Confused and mildly disgusted, he plunged his hand into the water to wash it off. Inevitably, he made a poor choice, and the feeling of another hand on his again made him panic and withdraw it immediately. He felt a nail scratch into his skin and the sting of salt water in torn flesh as he pulled back. He held his wounded hand to his chest, panting again. The thing had started pulling, almost intent on drowning him. It surfaced again.

Erwin cursed under his breath at the stinging of his hand and the situation he was in. He was alive, but he wasn't sure for how long. He watched the creature look at its own hand, then experimentally stick one finger in its mouth. It frowned at the taste and swam closer, extending a hand in a grabbing motion again. Erwin leaned away, shaking his head and hoping it understood. It continued to hold out its hand until Erwin's curiosity got the best of him and he put his hand out again.

The creature, the boy, it--he, whatever it was, held the hand to his face, prodding at the wound and agitating it with more saltwater, then leaned in, bringing it to his mouth. Fearing the worst, Erwin shut his eyes, but a strange sensation of relief blossomed from the injury and he cracked one eye open. The little thing was licking his cut, to both his horror and fascination, and wherever he licked the pain ceased. It--he finished with the back of his hand and held on lightly, letting Erwin roll it toward himself for examination. It wasn't healed by any means, but the bleeding had stopped and the pain was gone. The little creature moved quickly, splashing a bit and still holding onto his hand, his face lined up with Erwin's wrist. He licked the abrasions there from Erwin's fruitless attempts at freeing himself earlier and then promptly and expectantly pointed at his other hand so that he could have the other wrist as well.

He watched quietly as the creature took his other hand delicately into his own. He'd asked for the hand, albeit not with words, but still. He was clearly sentient enough to understand his injuries and that he had something he could do about them. Erwin looked closely at his other hand, a thin layer of the strange slime on it as before, but he didn't try to wash it off. Somewhere in the back of his mind was an answer to 'what is he?' but he wasn't willing to drag it up. The little thing finished with a smug and satisfied look and bobbed about on the top of the water aimlessly, watching Erwin with his large, quizzical eyes, much closer to the color of the sea than the green he'd originally thought.

"Hey," he started, and the creature flinched a little, sinking down so that the water went over his nose. Erwin sighed and sat back, trying to look nonthreatening.

"What are you?"

The little thing squinted and blinked.

"Where am I? Did you bring me here?"

He continued to watch from the water, bobbing up and down with the light tide. Erwin pressed his lips into a flat line and pushed his hand through his salt-dried hair.

"I guess you don't speak English. It makes sense." He rubbed his throat, the arid sting beginning to become unbearable. "Hey, I need water, something without salt in it."

He tried to mime drinking motions, then pointed at the ocean shaking his head and crossing his hands hoping somehow the little creature knew more about humans than the average ocean-dweller. He just cocked his head like a confused puppy, watching Erwin's frantic motions. After a moment, a hand popped out of the water and stopped abruptly, a motion that clearly said 'wait here' as if Erwin had much of a choice unless he wanted a hefty swim and a nice climb up the side of a cliff to get back to dry land from where he was. He dove in face-first and Erwin leaned forward curiously, enough to catch the splash caused by the whipping of an elaborate green tail disappearing into the depths.

He sat back chuckling softly in a fit of disbelieving hysterics. Of course, something in his subconscious had known all along, but until he'd actually seen it, it'd been easier just to ignore it. A mermaid. He'd been saved by a fucking mermaid. His resolve boiled down to one thought of which he was absolutely sure.

There was no way he wasn't dead.

***

At some point he fell asleep uncomfortably on the rock in the waning light of the setting sun, vaguely aware of how uncomfortable he was. His entire body ached for sleep, no matter how much he hurt. Some time ago, his legs had gone numb from waiting, motionless, for the boy to return. There wasn't much room for him to move, and his muscles cried out in protest every time he moved. His clothes had dried stiff and starchy and rubbed his skin almost painfully whenever he moved. Somewhere along the way he'd lost a shoe, the nice, expensive ones his last girlfriend had bought him before she'd gotten tired of his wandering eye and just him in general since his eye never seemed to wander toward women. It didn't take long for him to collapse into sleep in the first position he found that guaranteed he wouldn't fall off the rock.

He had a strange dream. He later wrote it off as dehydration, but he'd never known anything so vivid in his entire life. It swam between two settings, one in the thick of a forest and the other deep under the sea. In both, it seemed, there was no gravity but there was also no sense of freedom in being away from the ground. Only fear.

Great dark shapes loomed underneath him as he moved quickly, urgency and dread coursing through his veins. He had somewhere to be, something to do, and fast. Save him? Save him. He is hope.

Scenes rushed by him as he moved faster, great open spans of the ocean, a mass of trees. In both settings the ending came in the form of heavy jaws coming down on his arm and he knew it was lost.

He awoke to the sound of a boat motor, loud and rumbling to his ears, which had, until the arrival of the boat, only been exposed to the soft shushing of the waves around him. The low tide had brought out more of the rocks around him and at first he thought himself crazy. The sun had gone down and the only proof he had of the boat was the sound of its motor, a blinding light making it impossible to see.

"Hello there!" The mariner called.

Erwin blinked hard against the light, one arm over his eyes. It went out with a loud click.

"Be ye shipwrecked laddie?" The voice was jovial, the accent clearly fake. Erwin swallowed against his arid throat and summoned his voice.

"Yes! Can you take me back to shore?" The words came out slow and rasping.

The captain replied with a laugh and something splashed nearby. In the dark of the evening, Erwin had to squint at it before he realized it was a lifesaver, a long rope dragging behind it to the boat. He was loathe to get in the ocean ever again, what after nearly drowning, but his options were limited to getting back in the water or dying of dehydration on a rock so the choice was clear. The mariner pulled him onto the ship with surprising ease for a person so much smaller than himself.

"Thank you," he rasped. He collapsed into a sitting position on the bottom of the boat, surprisingly grateful for the hum of the engine vibrating the boat underneath him. The captain looked him over and then fished a water bottle out of a cooler. Erwin drank it in seconds and accepted another, but the mariner didn't let him finish it.

"Easy now. Dehydration's a slippery fish. You drink too fast and it'll all come back up."

Erwin swallowed, savoring the sensation of a functional throat.

"Oh god, thank you. I thought I was going to die. I started hallucinating. I saw mermaids, would you believe that?"

The captain gave him a strange look and then burst out laughing.

"Of course you did! Who do you think told me you were here?" Erwin watched the mariner lean over the edge of the boat. "Eren! Come say hi!"

Oh my god I'm on a boat with a lunatic.

Despite how skeptical he was, Erwin summoned the strength to peer over the edge of the deck and nearly fell back to the floor when the little creature from earlier popped out of the water.

"Holy shit," he breathed, looking down at the little face. The lights on the boat were dim without the piercing fog light on, but they shone in the big, curious eyes either way. He repeated himself when the captain turned on a set of lights on the bottom of the boat and illuminated the parts of his strange rescuer he'd been trying to pretend didn't exist. "Holy shit."

He fell back down, onto an actual seat rather than the floor of the boat and ran a hand down his face.

"I was rescued by a mermaid. A goddamned mermaid," he said to no one in particular. A laugh answered him.

"Merman. Eren is male. Technically. He at least identifies as something, unlike myself." The phrase seemed artificially inserted, like the captain had planned it. They stuck out a hand. "Hanji Zoe, merfolk expert extraordinaire, at your service."

Erwin took it limply, one hand still on his face and gave it a half-hearted shake.

"Erwin Smith. Dazed lawyer who's still not convinced he's not dead."

Hanji slapped him on the back with an unnecessary amount of force.

"Convinced now?" Then laughed. "Haha, you should really thank Eren. He said you were chained up."

Erwin peered through his fingers to glare at Hanji.

"How the hell did you know that?"

"I just told you. Eren told me."

"He's a mermaid--"

"Merman--"

"--he doesn't speak."

Hanji laughed again, beginning to get on Erwin's nerves.

"Of course he does!" Then leaned over the boat again. "Eren, say hi!"

Erwin peered at the boy suspiciously, trying not to look at the long tail illuminated by the boat's lights. The response came, almost too loud and slightly garbled, but very obviously--

"Hi!"

\--and Erwin snapped backwards, straightening up.

"Jesus fuck..."

He looked back over the boat and the little thing watched him, enthralled. Deviously, he splashed at the boat and Erwin jumped back again. The laughter that followed was eerily human, his big eyes clenched shut as if the event were hilarious. More astounding than that, though, were his ears, from which green frills expanded, not unlike the color of his tail.

"Eren, frills away," Hanji scolded and Eren's laughter died. He prodded at his ears and then seemed to remember some sort of etiquette and the frills tucked back into his head. His attention turned back to the bewildered man next to Hanji.

"Er-in," he said eagerly, pointing a finger.

"Wuh, w, Erwin," Hanji insisted, and Eren tested the syllable on his tongue a few times.

"Erwin!" He said with some triumph.

Hanji turned back to Erwin, beaming.

"Some things are still hard for him, but he's a good learner! Only one who will listen to me talk. Everyone else just wants to play with my toes."

"Toes?" Echoed Eren.

"There's more of them?" Erwin asked, incredulous.

"Of course there are! It's wonderful! They're amazing!" They started babbling, but Erwin had stopped listening and was instead staring at the little creature in the water.

Eren beamed when he noticed, but his smile faltered slightly under Erwin's grimace. He turned away from the boy in the water and interrupted the captain's monologue.

"Look, thanks for rescuing me," he looked down at the water hesitantly, "both of you. But I should really get back home because things are getting a little too weird for me."

Hanji straightened in all seriousness.

"I can't let you do that."

"Why the hell not?" Erwin was exhausted. He looked at the captain, comparing their sizes and wondering if he'd have the strength for a mutiny if it became necessary.

"Well, you know about them now; I can't just let you go."

Erwin stood up, towering over the mariner and trying to look intimidating.

"Look," the captain's palms extended towards Erwin, nonthreatening. "Just stick around for a few days until I think I can trust you enough to let you go."

Erwin narrowed his eyes. He could certainly seem trustworthy enough for a babbling lunatic like Hanji to believe him, and within a reasonable amount of time too. Aside from that, no one would believe him if went around saying he was nearly killed by the mafia but--oh, he was rescued by a mermaid. Merman. Whatever. He was supposed to be dead anyway.

"Fine, fine, whatever. Just tell me you have something better for me to sleep on that's not a rock."

Hanji grinned.

***

The alternative, as it turned out, was a cot in a rather strange guest room. Hanji's home was farther along the cliffs Eren had dragged Erwin to, and the upper level and exterior were incredibly normal considering, but the lunatic had somehow built into the rock underneath. Hanji explained that the house was built over a natural cave and once discovered, the lower levels were built, thanks to a savvy contracting friend who offered to help. Erwin had a feeling that 'offered' meant 'was coerced into'.

Upon entering the room, there wasn't much to see; there was next to no light in it, but it was warm and humid. All of the light, before Hanji turned on a second set of lights, came from a large pool in the center of the already-cavernous room. As the additional lights came on, Erwin was almost unsurprised to see Eren hanging over the edge of the pool.

"Alright!" Hanji announced. "There's the bathroom, and there's probably some clothes that'll fit you in that drawer there. I hope you'll find the cot to your liking. Better than a rock, eh? And you've got the best company around!"

Hanji and Eren beamed simultaneously.

"Right, thanks." Erwin said hesitantly, scanning the room. Aside from the drawer, the door to the bathroom, the cot, and a table against the wall by the stairs, the room was bare, the walls completely made of rock. Skeptical about how long his legs would hold him, Erwin seated himself on the cot.

“I love this room! I used to spend weeks down here with Eren! And some of the others, too when they came.” The captain turned to Eren. “Eren! Why don’t we do that anymore?!”

Eren shrugged. Erwin, only mildly interested in any of the babble, found himself struggling to keep his eyes open. Despite his nap earlier, he’d found that nearly drowning put quite a strain on his body.

“Thank you both for saving me earlier, but I really need to get some sleep if you don’t mind.” He went from vertical to horizontal, a voice in the back of his head telling him he should change his clothes, but he couldn’t summon the energy.

“Oh! Right, sorry! I almost drowned once, too. Haha, yeah, sure does make you tired! Nighty-night then!”

He heard Hanji’s footsteps disappear up the stairs, but the water somewhere in front of him was completely silent.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” He mumbled at Eren. He opened his eyes long enough to see Eren shake his head before they shut for good.

His sleep was hard and dreamless. He was warm enough in the room to be fine without a blanket, but he woke up drenched in sweat as a result. His body was sore and as he rolled over, he groaned, licked at his dry lips and nearly jumped backwards off the cot when he realized Eren was already up, staring at him.

“Jeez, don’t you sleep?”

The only thing he got in response was empty blinking.

“I don’t know about you or that lunatic, but it’s generally considered creepy when you stare at someone while they sleep.”

Eren frowned and stuck out his lip.

Erwin rubbed his hands over his face and pulled himself into a sitting position, gritting his teeth as his body protested. Again, he swallowed on his dry throat and nearly coughed. Eren seemed to be able to tell how dehydrated Erwin was.

“Erwin!” Eren pointed to the table by the wall where a questionable breakfast sat, a tall glass of water next to it.

“Oh, thanks.” Erwin took a moment to look at it wistfully, unsure if his legs would hold him. With a determined grunt, he forced himself to stand, testing them. When he was sure they would work, he made his way over to the table and slumped into the chair there, not willing to stand any longer than necessary. Something about getting laughed at for falling by someone who didn’t even have legs didn’t sit well with him.

He ate in silence, only after finishing the entire glass of water without a second thought, finding the food to be more appetizing than it looked. When he finished eating and turned around, Eren was still staring, not that it surprised Erwin anymore. Erwin glanced across the room and wondered if the bathroom were too far away, but the stiffness of his salt-dried clothes against his skin was too uncomfortable to bear. He made his way over to the drawer, hobbling like an old man, and found some clothes that would fit him, if a bit on the large side; they clearly didn’t belong to Hanji, but they were clean so he didn’t question it.

“I, uh, am gonna take a shower,” he announced to Eren, who simply nodded.

He was almost ashamed of having to sit in the bottom of the tub because his legs wouldn’t hold him. The water was at least warm, and the sensation of it running over him was a lot more comforting than the idea of sitting in a pool taking a bath in it while trying not to think of nearly dying. The thoughts, however, were rather inevitable and he finished showering as quickly as he could.

He emerged from the bathroom trying to adjust the clothes to fit him and hoping for some kind of belt in the drawer and was surprised (but not entirely upset) by the emptiness of the pool. With a bit of luck, there was a belt in the drawer as well, and feeling rather refreshed, he took a moment to appreciate the emptiness of the room. He wondered briefly if in Eren and Hanji’s absence he would be able to simply slip away and was at the stairs before Eren surfaced violently behind him, getting water all over the the floor.

“Jesus, Eren, don’t do that!” Erwin had stumbled backwards onto the stairs in surprise. “You’re gonna give me a goddamned heart attack.”

Eren smiled, his cheeks stuffed and the tail of some sort of fish hanging out of his mouth. With three determined chomps, he swallowed whatever he was eating and Erwin tried to control his stomach at the sight. He peered back behind him at the door at the top of the stairs.

“Locked,” Eren called him away. Erwin narrowed his eyes, climbed the remaining stairs and found that Eren was right.

“Of course it is,” he mumbled. Damn meticulous Hanji.

One look at Eren’s annoyingly sunny face made Erwin hope Hanji would return soon.

He sat back down on his cot, debating whether or not he should just try to nap through the impending hours of getting stared at by a mermaid. Merman. Whatever.

The mythological creature in question was swimming circles around the interior of the pool, just large enough to accommodate that. Erwin tried and failed at ignoring how incredibly strange seeing someone with a tail was. Unbeknownst to him, he made a strange face and Eren stopped circling.

“Angry?” He asked, and Erwin realized and relaxed his face.

“Oh, no. Just...confused.” His eyes trailed up and down Eren’s bare shoulders. With him hung over the edge of the pool again, his tail wasn’t visible, but out of sight didn’t mean out of mind. “Jesus, how are you even here? You’re a mermaid!”

“Merman,” Eren insisted.

Erwin gaped at him for a moment before shutting his mouth and calming himself. Something in him still wanted to be dead and in some bizarre purgatory. But he wasn’t. He could feel his heart beating, body aching, and head pounding. He was alive and he was real and so was Eren. He took a moment to bury his face in his hands, then rubbed at his temples.

“Okay?” Eren asked.

Erwin peeked through his fingers and sighed. Eren was still there, of course, his webbed hands folded in front of him on the edge of the pool. He stared ceaselessly at Erwin with his ridiculous eyes. Other than the obvious--tail, hands, gills, you name it--his eyes were the most inhuman part of him, almost comically large and a color Erwin was certain wasn’t human. Green. Blue? Somewhere in between. The color of the sea at noon, but undisturbed as if Erwin could see straight into their depths. But it was the opposite way around. Eren’s stare was unwavering, unrelenting, and Erwin was certain he saw more than he let on, staring like that.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Erwin said finally, with another sigh.

Eren beamed and the strange frills on his ears extended, his gills opening simultaneously. Erwin’s brow creased at the sight and he couldn’t help leaning in. Eren seemed to realize and tucked them away, slightly embarrassed.

“Weird?” He asked, looking somewhat ashamed.

“Yeah, kinda,” Erwin muttered, but he corrected himself as Eren’s face fell. “But just, I’m not used to, you know, people with gills. So you...breathe air and water?”

He felt stupid just asking, but Eren perked up.

“Yup!” And he proceeded to disappear under the water long enough for Erwin to get bored peering in after him, but also entirely too long for any human being.

When he resurfaced, his gills were still open and Erwin leaned to the side, watching them close and seal, practically invisible against his neck. Eren followed his eyes and brought a hand up to his neck.

“Want to see?”

Against his better judgement, he found himself on his knees, leaning entirely too close to the edge of a pool for someone who had nearly drowned only a matter of hours ago. Eren took Erwin’s hand with one of his and brought it up to his neck gently. Holding eye contact felt strange, so Erwin’s eyes followed his hand, half fascinated and half disturbed by the slickness of Eren’s skin. It wasn’t scaly like that of a fish (though he imagined the tail was a different story), but rather closer to that of human skin covered in lotion. The tips of the gills themselves were firm, and as cleverly hidden as they were, Erwin could tell where each slit was. He pulled his hand away in surprise when Eren opened them under his fingertips.

Eren laughed and his frills opened again. Being much closer, Erwin could see that they weren’t attached to his ears like he had thought, but were instead slightly behind them and tucked into the place where his ear met his head, underneath his dark hair.

“Weird?” He asked again, but his eyes shone with amusement and eagerness rather than shame.

“Yeah, still weird,” Erwin confirmed but Eren shook his head.

“Not weird! Toes.”

“Toes? Toes are weird?”

“Yeah!” He traced little hills in the air with a finger, miming his idea of toes.

“Says the kid with a tail.”

He leaned forward and his tail came up behind him. He peered back at it, looking for anything abnormal, but he gave up and shrugged and the tail went back underwater with a smack, soaking the floor behind him.  

“Not weird,” he insisted.

Erwin sat back, crossing his legs in front of him.

“Yeah, I guess for you it’s not. But you live with other...merpeople. To me you’re half a fish.”

He tried to laugh, but his throat was still too dry to manage it. Eren, for once, was no longer staring at his face and Erwin traced his gaze downwards. He moved his foot experimentally and Eren’s eyes followed.

“You know you could just ask to see them.”

Eren looked up at him with gleaming eyes and Erwin pushed his foot towards Eren to get him to stop looking at him like that. There was an explanation for the sudden jolt in his stomach, but he didn’t have a word for it. At least, not one he wanted to use.

Eren snatched up the offered foot and held it in front of his face with rapt fascination, pulling Erwin slightly forward. Erwin chuckled to himself at Eren’s unbroken concentration and gave his toes an experimental wiggle. Eren’s face lit up and he grabbed onto one of the toes with his thumb and forefinger. He moved the digit gingerly, as if he were afraid of breaking it, then, curious, slid a finger into the gap between two toes. Erwin reacted before he could think, his foot jerking out of Eren’s grasp and catching the center of his cheek.

“Shit!” He shot forward spewing out hasty apologies. He brought a hand to Eren’s cheek, examining it and apologizing again, between curses. “I’m sorry! My feet are ticklish…are you alright?”

Having clenched his eyes shut, Eren opened them slowly and blinked, then smiled and Erwin pulled his hand away. He was blaming Hanji’s omelette for his stomach troubles. Eren licked his thumb and rubbed it over his cheek and Erwin watched the growing redness recede. He grabbed for Erwin’s foot again, looking mischievous.

“Don’t you dare,” Erwin warned.

Eren smirked and locked his arm around Erwin’s ankle, then grabbed for his toes again, sure to repeat what he’d done before. Erwin tried to pull his foot out of Eren’s grasp, but the boy was stronger than he looked by far. He only succeeded by bracing his other foot against Eren’s shoulder, which distracted him with another set of toes long enough for Erwin to tumble backwards away from Eren.

“No more toes for you,” Erwin scolded, rubbing the back of his head where he’d hit it getting away from Eren. Eren stuck out his lip in an angry pout.

“Later,” Eren said determinedly, nodding and eyeing Erwin’s feet, just out of reach.

“No.” Erwin tucked his feet underneath him. Eren huffed an angry sigh and his gills opened as he exhaled. “So,” Erwin began, keeping his distance, but trying not to lapse into an uncomfortable silence. “Do you sleep underwater or…”

“Hanji says like sharks. Always swimming. But here I can sleep.” He folded his arms and set his head down for emphasis.

“How many more of you are there?”

Eren scratched his head and looked at the ceiling, trying to think.

“Lots?” He shrugged.

“So where do you live?”

“Caves, reefs, lots of places! Not like humans. Wherever we want.”

The more Eren tried to say, the more accurate his English got, but it was clear he wasn’t able to say as much as he wanted based on how much he used his hands as he spoke. Erwin got the feeling that he understood it perfectly, but just couldn’t physically say the words, or that he hadn’t had much practice with long sentences.

“How long have you known Hanji?”

“Very long!” He smiled.

“And she taught you how to speak?”

Eren nodded.

“How long did that take?”

“Not much? Five years maybe.”

Erwin eyed Eren carefully, trying to picture him as a teenage merman trying to talk for the first time.

“That’s still pretty long.”

Eren shook his head.

“Twenty years when I met Hanji.”

“Twenty?” Erwin gaped at him. He looked twenty years old, if that. “Are you even twenty years old?”

“Eighty,” Eren grinned. “Not like humans. Very long. Four hundred sometimes.”

Erwin’s eyebrows shot into his hair. He hadn’t been expecting that, of course.

“The sea is very old. So are we,” Eren hummed, nodding thoughtfully.

“Well. Then I get to call you an old man. Most humans die around eighty.”

“You are…?”

“Thirty.”

Darkness crossed Eren’s face.

“Fifty is not very long.”

Erwin shrugged.

“It is to us, and there’s no changing it. Besides, it would be zero if you hadn’t shown up yesterday when you did.” He looked at Eren and felt his stomach twist again. “How did you even know?”

“I didn’t.” He shook his head. “I like boats.”

Erwin smiled in spite of himself. It was some strange fluke. He was alive because the idiots driving the boat happened to drive it close enough for a curious merman to notice. Being saved was a fluke in itself, but Eren was from an entirely different world. As far as humans had gone in the ocean, it still remained large and mysterious enough to harbor an entire population of intelligent beings, completely without detection. Underneath the harbor all that time was Eren and his people, swimming and living out their lives while the world went on around them, and had he not nearly died, Erwin would’ve never known.

They continued to talk for hours until Hanji came home.

***

He had a name for it. He’d felt it before. It wasn’t anything new to him, no, not in the slightest. But this was different. This wasn’t high school, spending a little too long looking at teammates huddled in front of him on the football field. This wasn’t college, where he was quiet about it, but no one minded. It wasn’t the barista at his favorite coffee shop, sure to smile more for him than anyone else. This wasn’t a criminal not quite on his feet yet, in need of a leg up. This was something different entirely.

Of course, it was something about himself that he was fine with. He’d never had a problem with it; he was big enough that people didn’t mess with him for it, and generally unobtrusive about it anyway. It was just a part of him and he knew there were people who didn’t like it, or wouldn’t if they knew, but the need to tell everyone wasn’t there. Of his own family, only his aunt knew, and everyone else was convinced that he simply hadn’t found the right girl yet, or was too busy with work to look.

In reality, he had far more time than he’d ever needed. For his own relief, there were always bars, always people he could take home, just for one night. They could leave phone numbers and ask to see him again as much as they pleased, but in the end, the door was closed, opportunity never even there, and they all moved on. He’d thought, maybe, with Levi, things could be different, but in the end neither of them had any hope for that, and Levi had taken what he needed and left. Erwin wouldn’t lie to himself and say that he hadn’t been thinking of that small aspect of emptiness when he’d nearly died. It was there, floating up in his mind as he sank down.

_I will die and no one will miss me. No one loves me._

But he’d caught sight of a pair of alien green eyes, and had awoken on a rock, confused and dehydrated, half-crazy and half-dead. But in the cavernous room under the mariner’s house, he was hydrated, and alive. It was there, a clear thought in his head that he kept pushing away as much as he could, but he knew it was pointless.

Days passed. To the outside world, he was a dead man, or at least very much missing, but out on the bay with Hanji, in the dark of his room talking himself to sleep with Eren, he was alive, found. He laughed at himself to think what he’d been missing, what he hadn’t even known he didn’t have. For whatever reason, Hanji was a better friend to him than anyone he’d worked with, gone to school with. And Hanji’s friend Mike, the builder of the sublevel and occasional occupant of the room (whose clothes Erwin wore), who took delight in their strange secret world and had a strange habit of smelling things, was a better friend to him than men he’d known for years. In those few days, in that house, Erwin found more of a reason to live than he could’ve possibly imagined existed.

He could’ve written it off as something that simply happened after being so close to the jaws of death, but he knew better. His euphoria was brought on by something much bigger than the simple joy of being alive, though he wasn’t sure he’d had that before nearly dying anyway. How easy it had been for him to simply live without really living.

No, he knew, in a measure of absolution. Underneath the harbor all that time was Eren and his people, swimming and living out their lives while the world went on around them, and had he not nearly died, Erwin would’ve never known he could fall in love.

***

He had to leave. He knew he had to leave, but he knew a lot of things too. He hadn’t even come up with a proper story yet--where could he have believably gone where he couldn’t call in to work? His only hope for keeping his job was to think the best of Nile and pray that their history as old friends would mean something to him. He knew he had to leave. He couldn’t stay.

Staying meant being a burden to Hanji. It meant not having an income anymore, and feeling like dead weight. It meant hiding the identity of the person he cared about most and completely secluding himself from society at times. It meant being dead, without a body to show to his surely worried-sick mother. But it also meant staying with strange and amazing people. It meant having a reason to live, a reason to smile. It meant being close to Eren. It meant being in love for the first time in his memory.

Perhaps his aunt had gotten to him too much. And perhaps she was wrong. Her lessons were good, sure, but she was wrong. Love wasn’t detrimental. Love was a reason to live after three decades of empty grayness.

It was the evening before his week was up, before Hanji would let him leave, and all he’d done for the entirety of the day was talk with Eren. Outside, on the boat, inside in his room. He’d gotten in the water and swam with him, drowning miles from his mind. Once he’d gotten used to Eren’s tail occasionally (and he wasn’t convinced it was accidental) brushing his feet, swimming had been fun. He was a thirty-year-old man. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had fun.

He sat on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water and taunting Eren, who was doing his best to ignore the alluring toes and talk to Erwin. After awhile, he succeeded, keeping his gaze on Erwin’s face. He set a hand on Erwin’s knee while he was mid-sentence and Erwin stopped abruptly.

“Eren?” His eyes landed heavily on the hand on his knee. Eren looked up at him in sincerity.

“Erwin,” he stated, holding his gaze. “You like me.”

“Yes, you’re a good friend.” His composure held.

_Not here, not now. He’s not even human._

“No, more than that.”

Erwin shook his head. His composure would hold if it killed him.

But it didn’t. He’d seen it, firsthand, swum right beside him. Eren was strong, his tail was a force to be reckoned with, and he had no trouble using it to propel himself upwards and out of the water. He had no problem reaching up to Erwin’s face and closing the gap between them. He felt his composure crumble. Everything he’d been holding back filled in the space like water rushing a broken dam.

His hands came up to Eren’s face as he leaned down with Eren, who couldn’t hold himself up at Erwin’s level forever. It was impossible, even more impossible than Eren himself. Every part of his rational mind told him he should not be there, leaning precariously over the edge of the pool kissing Eren. He was Erwin Smith, a successful attorney at law, a taxpayer, a man with whom no one had any issues. But that Erwin Smith was miserable, and the one there, trying not to fall into the pool with Eren, was elated.

He cupped the back of Eren’s neck, feeling the rough ridges of his frills underneath his palms. He ran a thumb over Eren’s cheek, where he’d kicked him on accident for tickling him. He wove his fingers into Eren’s hair, thick but soft. His rational mind told him it was wrong. Eren wasn’t human. But he didn’t care. Nothing in him wanted to let go.

Eren slid back away from him and Erwin realized Eren had still been holding himself up.

“Erwin,” he breathed, holding their foreheads together with his grip on Erwin’s shoulders. “You lied.”

“I know,” he mumbled back. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t leave. Stay.”

Erwin shook his head against Eren’s.

“I can’t. I have to go back. I have a job and a house.”

“Stay here. With me.”

He pulled away, sitting up, and Eren remained at his knee.

“I’m sorry, Eren, I can’t. The human world...it’s not like yours. I have responsibilities, and nothing here is free.”

“I know jobs and money,” he snapped. “Stay here. Hanji has jobs and money.”

Erwin kept shaking his head. He scooped up one of Eren’s hands and held it.

“I have no choice. In the morning, we have to say goodbye.”

He allowed himself to place a hand on Eren’s cheek and found that his strange green eyes were brimming with tears.

“No. Not goodbye.” He shook his head, pulling away from Erwin’s hand. A few tears slipped out of his eyes, clenched tightly shut.

“I told you, I can’t stay here anymore. I’ve been here long enough as it is.” His words were breaking his own heart, but he could feel his rationality returning, quick to quiet the pain. “I’m going to bed now. We’ll say goodbye in the morning.”

He leaned down and kissed Eren’s forehead, and before he sat up again, Eren locked his arms around Erwin’s neck and crushed their lips together again. Erwin was less responsive to the second one and it ended quickly enough. Erwin pulled himself away, went to his cot and went to sleep.

***

Eren wasn’t there in the morning. He’d said his goodbye.

Erwin thanked Hanji for everything and left with a heavy heart.

Returning to work was as difficult as he’d thought. Nile wasn’t happy that he’d missed so much of it, and that he didn’t even have an excuse, but he let him off with a warning as long as he finished his paperwork. He did, day by day, keeping up with his cases and working at his desk. The days blurred together, and the work seemed an endless flow. Every conversation was the same, ‘how’s this’, ‘how’s that’, ‘did you this or that?’ Meaningless.

A week passed without event.

Then two.

“Erwin!” A rakish female voice seemed to penetrate his heavy fog. “Are you listening? I said the firm’s going out for some drinks and I think you should come along. You’ve been so down since you came back from whatever happened to you.” She trailed off, clearly thinking the event a touchy subject.

“Petra,” he called, standing and placing a hand on her head. He forced a smile. “Thank you for the offer. But I can’t.”

“Erwin, what happened to you? You were never like this before.” Her face was painted over with deep concern.

“I…” He let himself think. He trusted her, but no one would ever believe him, not that he wanted to talk about it. She, at least knew. He’d felt the need to give her a reason as to why he couldn’t return the feelings she’d had when they first met. “I found something great. But I’ve lost it. It’s...not the same.”

She pursed her lips.

“Maybe you just need to find it again. Why don’t you come with us and see if you can loosen up?”

Find it.

“No, actually.” He straightened up. “I have plans.”

“Erwin Smith, you do not have plans. Where the hell could you be going? Home to TV dinner?”

“Actually.” He smiled, genuine this time. “I was thinking of going scuba diving.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blink away the gray. The color is hiding just under the waves. It's waiting for you to come back and find it

He trudged up the walkway through little rivers of water that had started running down the hill as the rain came. His feet stuck in the mud and by the time he reached the door, he was soaked and embarrassed. He almost dreaded facing Hanji, though he didn’t feel like he’d get any judgement from them. Still, he wished there were another option. But as it was, he didn’t even have any idea where to start looking for Eren. It wasn’t as if he could tie a weight to his feet and hope Eren showed up again.

He banged on the door with slow, deliberate knocks and waited, leaning in slightly to be out of the rain. After a few moments with the heavy rain as the only audible sound, the door opened slightly.

“Hanji,” he started, leaning in and expecting a welcome.

The door slammed in his face.

“Hanji, wait!” He gave the door another disheartened pound with the hammer of his fist.

“Do you know what you did?” Came the angry reply. “I haven’t seen him in weeks and before that he wouldn’t say a word to anyone. Go back to your cushy office!”

“Hanji, please! Just let me in.” His forehead hit the wood of the door. Only the rain answered him.

He continued to stand against the door forlornly, fists and forehead pressed to the the hard wood. There was still water running down his back from his hair into his equally wet suit. He hadn’t bothered to change after work. He stood there feeling his heart sink. He lifted his head and let it hit the door again with a dull thunk.

“Hanji, please,” he begged into the door. He knew there would be no answer. Surely the captain had gotten tired of listening to his pathetic whining.

He slid down with his back against the door. There would be no giving up. He’d never forgive himself if he marched back to his car through the rain with his tail between his legs. Petra was right. He needed this, something that had finally given meaning to his gray and boring life. But he’d been wrong. He hadn’t lost it, not yet. He was an idiot for leaving it behind, for leaving Eren floating in that pool, for ignoring the hurt he’d seen on his face when he walked away. But it wasn’t lost. He wanted to kick himself for giving up though.

He slid down the door further, his legs in the rain from his feet to his knees. He wondered if he’d regret it later, maybe he’d get sick, but he didn’t care. His health wasn’t the priority. His priority was fixing his mistake and getting forgiveness from the boy in the pool.

***

“So you’re as old as my grandparents and you’ve never been anywhere but the San Francisco bay?”

Erwin was on his stomach, his chin in his hands as he watched Eren splash around in the little pool happily. Eren stopped swimming for a moment and nodded.

“Just here.”

“And you don’t ever get bored, staying in the same place? You could explore the whole ocean if you wanted to!”

Eren shrugged.

“I like here. My friends are here.”

“Surely there are other merpeople in other seas. You could make more friends travelling. Are there different languages?”

“No.” Eren shook his head. “We are the same. But not my kind of friends. My human friends. Only here.”

“You’d stay here for decades for just two people?”

“Three,” Eren corrected. “Hanji, Mike, and you.”

Erwin’s stomach twisted, but he forced himself to laugh anyway.

“Alright, three people. You’d stay here for decades for three people? When you could be off in the Australian seas, eating exotic fish and basking in the sun?”

Eren shook his head vigorously, looking somewhat somber.

“No, no. Too dangerous. Lots of sharks.”

“Sharks?” Erwin hadn’t given it any thought, but the idea of Eren being afraid of sharks was rational enough. “Do they hunt you?”

“Sometimes. Not often. But not many here. But there, so many, so big.”

Erwin hummed. “I take it you talk to others who travel then?”

“Yes!” Eren lit up. “Armin wanted to see the world. Mikasa took him.”

“Your friends?”

Eren nodded. “Since we were very small.”

Erwin nodded appreciatively and tried to picture Eren swimming around with his own kind, but for whatever reason, the thought seemed strange. He wondered mildly if it was just his own selfish feelings wanting to keep Eren to himself, as connected to the human world as he could possibly be. At least, without getting put in a zoo or something. Looking at Eren again, he changed his mind. He didn’t want him to be introduced to the cruelty and judgement of the human world. He wanted to keep Eren to himself, whether that would end well or not.

Eren tugged on Erwin’s sleeve and drew him out of his reverie.

“Your friends?”

“Mine? Oh, I guess I have a few.” Erwin’s mind seemed to dart immediately to the men he took home from bars and clubs and he shook himself of the thought. _Thinking of one-night-stands. Erwin Smith, you truly possess the mark of a lonely man._ “There are some people at the office I go out for drinks with. Not often. Other than that, I live alone.”

“No wife?”

“No. No wife,” Erwin said somewhat sourly.

“She broke your heart?”

“Eren? Where did you even get that from?”

He shrugged. “Hanji used to let me watch TV.”

“Figures,” Erwin muttered. “But no. I just...don’t look for people. Women in particular.”

“TV women!” Eren shot out of the water a few inches in his excitement, then sank back down.

“What?”

“Humans like women for sex?”

Erwin sat up, his face contorted into something between disbelief and disgust.

“No...Eren, where are you getting this from?”

“Videos! Hanji showed me. Hanji said very important, very educational.” He sounded out the last word slowly.

“I see,” he said slowly. “And what exactly happened in these videos?”

“No one wore clothes. Lots of things? Women are good for touching that.” He pointed to Erwin’s groin and Erwin shifted uncomfortably.

Watching Eren’s face, so serious and happy, as if he thought he were sharing hard facts about the human world, Erwin couldn’t help but laugh. It started small, bubbling up from his stomach, but it just kept building until he was on his side, nearly in tears. Looking at Eren only made it worse. His confusion was so genuine and intense that Erwin laughed harder every time he opened his eyes long enough to see Eren. After a few minutes, he was able to finally calm himself down and explain.

“Eren,” he wheezed, trying not to lapse into laughter again. “Hanji showed you porn. Porn is probably the worst representation of human behavior there is. No one has sex like that.” He dissolved into laughter again, picturing Eren practically taking notes on it as if it were a show on National Geographic. He sobered up, desperate to dispel Eren’s misconceptions.

“It’s been centuries since humans have seen women like that. You’ll still find a few who do, but we typically value our women as much more than just sex dolls. And aside from that, not every man wants to have sex with women. Surely your society has females. What do you do?”

“Females? We are the same. Females have young, but no other difference. Mating is not so...loud. Or sticky.” He wrinkled his nose. “It feels good for humans?”

“Uh, yeah.” He tried to ignore the heat in his cheeks. “Is that weird?”

“Yes!” Eren nodded quickly, then scrunched up his face. “Mating is for making young. Humans do it for...fun?”

“Yeah, usually. But like I said, it’s not always about women. And it’s usually nowhere near that loud.”

“And sticky?” Eren asked, somewhat reserved, but clearly hopeful.

“Unavoidable.”

Eren groaned and threw himself backwards into the water. He came back up pouting.

“Why do you even care?” Erwin examined him quizzically.

“Curious!” Eren took a sudden interest in the rock at the edge of the pool, waving away the statement with a webbed hand.

“Right, well.” Erwin gave a short chuckle. “You’re willing to sit--er--float around learning about the human world and you won’t even explore your own?”

Eren shrugged. “I never wanted it. Here I want.”

 _That makes two of us then_ , Erwin thought, somewhat bitterly. Even worlds apart, he couldn’t help but think that he and Eren were nearly one in the same, slowly going through the motions in worlds they didn’t quite fit in, longingly exploring worlds they knew they could never have. But their most cohesive factor, and perhaps it was all in Erwin’s head, seemed to be one another. With each other, they at least had a little piece of a world of their design.

In thinking that, though, Erwin never thought to think that the world where they were united was the one they truly desired.

***

He couldn’t place how long he’d been slumped against Hanji’s door, staring bleakly into the sheets of gray rain. He could blink slowly against the waning light, but his eyes weren’t seeing. Rather, his head was full of visions of Eren, all the ways they’d somehow found respite in one another, due to their unquenchable yearning for something more.

He’d come to anticipate the strikes of lightning as they illuminated the sky. He wondered if Eren could see them from wherever he was under the waves. As he continued to stare emptily at the sky, he tried to rationalize with himself.

_It’s just a crush. You can get over him like everyone else. What makes this any different? Just go home._

He could feel the thoughts stirring in his limbs, as if they would actually move him to acting on them, but he remained against the wood of the door, utterly motionless. Without warning, the door opened from behind him and he fell backwards, only catching himself at the last minute.

“I figured you’d still be here. Come inside,” Hanji sighed.

It took a moment for Erwin to rouse himself, but as Hanji walked away, the captain mumbled “He’s here,” and Erwin found his strength again.

He tried not to move, still dripping wet from pouting in the rain.

“Let me see him,” he couldn’t keep the begging tone out of his voice.

Hanji eyed him carefully. “He doesn’t know you’re here. I figured he’d show up sooner or later. He’s always hated storms, but I don’t know if he’ll want to see you.”

“Please, just--” Erwin moved forward, but caught himself. He wasn’t in any position to make demands. After a moment of Hanji nearly glaring at him, the silence was broken.

“I’ll tell him you’re here. No more.”

He waited for Hanji to come back up the stairs as if he’d committed a crime and was waiting for the verdict. In his own way, he had. But he’d done enough mentally kicking himself for just leaving, as if there had been no other option. Looking back, he wondered how he’d ever managed it in the first place. He couldn’t do it again. He didn’t want to go back to his world of gray.

The door to the basement room opened and Hanji walked up, looking hard, but rather indifferent.

“He said he’ll see you.”

Hanji had the good grace not to follow him down, though whether it was out of pity or respect, he couldn’t tell.

He stopped short at the bottom of the stairs. He’d kept his eyes off the brightness of the lighted pool as he’d descended, but when he’d gotten both feet on solid ground, he looked. He couldn’t tell if his heart were soaring or sinking. Minutes passed. Eren’s expression was unreadable, and he knew his own would be reflecting the ache in his chest. He hoped it made for an apologetic look as well. As Eren continued to float there, staring at him silently, he summoned the will to speak.

“Eren…”

He watched Eren’s shoulders drop from their almost-defensive position and his self-control went out the window. He ran to the edge of the pool, dropped to his knees and made to reach down for Eren, but he’d already propelled himself out of the water into Erwin’s arms.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbled into Eren’s hair, holding on as tightly as he could. Holding Eren had gotten water all over him again, but he didn’t care. He held on tighter.

“You left,” he heard Eren say from his shoulder.

“I know. I’m sorry. I thought I could just go back, but I was wrong.” He squeezed Eren. “I was so wrong.”

Erwin buried his face in Eren’s hair, but reeled back when an opening frill hit him in the face. He held Eren away from him and found he looked angry. He started to speak but Eren interrupted him.

“That’s for leaving,” he pouted, but his angry face didn’t hold. “I thought you didn’t care.” His voice wavered and Erwin could see his eyes were watering.

“Hey…” He cupped Eren’s cheek and wiped away the tears with his thumb as they started to fall.

Eren let go with one arm and sank into the water a little, then touched his wet cheek a if it were alien to him.

“My eyes…”  He looked at his wet fingertips, then at Erwin.

“You’re crying,” Erwin explained, wiping away the tears again. “Don’t cry.” He kissed Eren’s face, his cheeks, his forehead. The tears continued to fall and Eren wiped at them, utterly confused.

“You’ve never cried before?”

“Underwater.” Eren mopped at his face with the back of his wrist.

Erwin laughed and took Eren’s hand away holding it lightly, then brushed Eren’s wet cheek with the back of his fingers. When Eren had cried for him when he left, the tears had fallen straight from his eyes, never touching his cheeks.

“I guess you’ve never cried above water then. They’re just tears.” He left a lingering kiss on the top of Eren’s head. He repeated himself, but with a bit of laughter. “Don’t cry, Eren.”

“I’m crying.” Eren laughed. He smiled up at Erwin through his watery eyes and looped his arms around the back of Erwin’s neck.

Erwin kissed him like that, half-crying and half-laughing, but all softness and smiles. He knew, whether he deserved it or not, he was forgiven.

***

“Erwin! Come down from there! It’s time for dinner!”

“Okay!” He called down to his mother from high in his favorite tree, though they both knew it would be awhile before he actually came down.

He was as high as he could climb, peering over the fence into his neighbor’s yard. The house had been empty for quite some time, and its new occupants had Erwin watching rapturously. There were three children, as far as he could tell, all around his age. The two younger ones--girls--were busy playing with dolls in the grass, enacting some sort of romance between them. He thought it simply out of necessity that all of the dolls were girls. Their game held his attention for awhile; mom said love between two girls was strange, but auntie told him there was nothing wrong with it. She always had nice lady friends to say the same.

He could only watch the girls for so long--the dolls were busy doing each other’s hair and that was no fun--and his attention landed on the boy, perhaps older than Erwin himself, but not by much. He was away from his sisters, in the center of the yard digging determinedly at the dirt with a plastic shovel. Erwin watched, enthralled by how much concentration the boy had, shovelful after shovelful, never seeming to tire of the task. Erwin thought that in his tree he was invisible to the world, that even if someone looked up and tried to see him, they couldn’t. His tree, after all, was magic. But the boy looked up, looked right at him, then stood, brushed himself off, and went inside.

Erwin’s heart pounded in his chest. The boy had seen right through his magic. The game was up. He’s been discovered, and it was time for dinner. He shimmied down the tree and ran inside.

Mom said ten was too old to be climbing trees all day anyway.

A few days later, when he thought the magic had returned, made him invisible again even without the tree, the spell broke before his eyes for the second time.

“Did you know we have new neighbors, Erwin?”

His mother smiled at him, baking something like she always was. Dad wasn’t home, but he never was, always at work. Mom never worked. Erwin said nothing to his mother, busily pretending to do his math homework.

“I met them yesterday. It’s a family. The mother’s name is Nancy, lovely woman. She’s got three kids around your age. I think you should play with them sometime. You could make friends. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, dear?”

That was his mother, telling him what to like and what not to like. Someday, his mother’s choices for him would make him a seemingly whole and amiable man, but at ten, Erwin could only nod along to her suggestion.

He was dumped with the children as ceremonially as his mother left him with his aunt every other weekend, with a few civil words between the attending adults and then the departure of his mother. Nancy and her children, at least, seemed delighted to have him. The two girls giggled as he introduced himself, formally like he did when he met his mother’s friends, but the boy just watched him carefully.

Lily and Rachel--the girls--were quick to welcome him to their games and their older brother, Tyler, simply watched as Erwin was assigned a doll to take part in the game of house. After it turned into a romance again, Erwin couldn’t help but ask the question that had surfaced in his mind the other day.

“Isn’t it weird for them to like each other? They’re both girls.”

Lily and Rachel had only blinked at him.

“But they’re in love,” Lily protested, crossing her arms. That was sufficient.

“Oh.”

Tyler warmed up to him after his quiet observation, after Erwin had grown visibly bored of playing with dolls and girls, and had offered him a seat next to him while he watched TV. The show, however, was of no interest to them. and they sat on the couch talking. After a while, they’d turned to face one another, knees drawn up and legs crossed, both in the most enthralling conversation they’d ever had. Its subject was long gone from Erwin’s mind, but it marked the moment when the two became fast friends, nearly inseparable, and his weekends alternated between spending them with his aunt and spending them with Tyler.

It was also immediately apparent to Erwin that he and Tyler were more than just friends.

He’d seen through. He’d broken the spell.

They grew up together, quiet and appreciative of one another. Erwin’s mother never suspected a thing; she was just glad her son finally had friends. Nancy, however, seemed to pick up on it from the start, but she loved her son fiercely and only cautioned them not to do anything stupid. They were never terribly obvious about their undefined closeness, but with maturity came curiosity and blind passion and by the time he was fifteen, Erwin was certain that he loved Tyler. He knew his mother would never approve, but he’d grown up to please her. He wanted her acceptance.

“Mom, what would you do if I liked someone you didn’t approve of?”

She’d looked up from her paper with vague disinterest.

“You mean Lily?” She hummed. “Erwin, dear, I don’t disapprove of Lily. She’s a lovely girl--in her own way. But you know I’ve always liked Rachel better. But I can respect that you like Lily. She’s more like you, after all.” Then, a short laugh. “Though not quite so much as Tyler.” But she caught the look on Erwin’s face. “You did mean Lily, right, dear?”

He’d swallowed everything that had been building in him and watched it crumble over his need for his mother’s approval. He nodded sagely.

Tyler moved away that year.

Their parting terms were hazy; Tyler wanted to reinforce the idea of their impossibility.

“You and I, Erwin, we’re make-believe. You can’t even face your mother. Something that no one knows about is as good as imaginary. It’s like…” He’d looked around until his eyes had landed on a box full of Rachel’s stuff, sitting in the moving van. She was twelve and very much into fairytales. “Like mermaids. You get two sailors to say they’ve seen them, but no one will acknowledge something skeptical like that unless they see it with their own eyes. It’s a myth. Impossible. Like a mermaid.”

***

He’d never been afraid of himself. After he’d come to terms with the way he felt about men, he’d never been afraid of it. But he’d loved people loving him, and only that. There was never enough room for him to love them back. Eren was different. He could feel it, first a little tingle in his chest, the twist of his stomach, then a flutter, a great motion, until he could feel it, massive and coiling inside of him. Then, he was afraid. He feared it because, for the first time, it could hurt him. But more than that, he feared it because it could hurt Eren, and he couldn’t live with the thought of ever doing that.

He was sure to always come back.

Being a rather affluent bachelor had its perks; he bought a boat and rented out dock space for it. Every weekend, every moment he had free was spent with Eren. When the weather was bad, they spent their time at Hanji’s, either alone or with Hanji and Mike. But when the weather was nice, Erwin drove his boat to the rocks by the cliffside that Eren had taken him to when he saved his life. It was isolated and beautiful, too dangerous for any recreational boating, too rocky for any practical fishing, and too difficult to reach for any swimmers. He went knowing Eren would be close by, always drawn in by the sound of his boat’s motor.

He always went in his swim trunks. After awhile, he started to wonder why he even had a second half to the ladder on his boat. As soon as he dropped his anchor and started to climb down, Eren would rocket out of the water and pull him in impatiently. He kissed him under the water for as long as Erwin could stand. That was their everyday. That was the only reason Erwin could finally see the world in color.

“You’re really gonna kill me one of these days.” He sat on a rock, panting slightly. When Eren had dragged him underwater to kiss him, Erwin hadn’t wanted to let go.

Eren looked at him, terrified and apologetic.

“Erwin!”

“Relax,” he laughed, catching his breath. “I’m kidding. But it’s beautiful down there with you. I’d stay forever if I could.”

Eren’s cheeks filled with color and he stuck out his bottom lip.

“You can’t. You’ll die.” He clung to Erwin’s knee, head leaning into the hand on his face.

“Maybe. But I’d die happy.”

The look Eren gave him was too heartbreaking. He perked up after a second.

“Scuba?”

“Oh, yeah.” Erwin rubbed his chin, then ruffled Eren’s hair until he stuck out his frills out of annoyance. “You know, I’d thought of that, but I guess I forgot. Certainly worth a shot.”

He slid himself back into the water, up to his neck. Eren grabbed his hands and pulled him out further, so that the two of them were slowly drifting backwards.

“But we can always do that later. Here and now, this is perfect.”

It was. He knew it was. In Eren’s arms, or even anywhere near him, there was no fear of the thing coiled in his chest writhing up and taking a bite out of his heart. Eren placated it, made it obedient. With Eren, it was filling, wholeness, warm and delightful, but without him, it was empty and gray, like an ache at the end of the day that won’t go away, no matter how long you rest.

Erwin kicked along weakly, knowing Eren could keep them both afloat without issue. He pulled himself closer to Eren so he could feel his skin under his lips, smell the ocean in his hair, kiss away the thought of ever having to leave.

He kissed Eren, first like fire, then in tides, then little pecks until every kiss became a sigh.

He stayed and swam until his skin burned in the salt of the water and his lips were so dry and cracked that he couldn’t smile at Eren anymore. When they cracked and bled, Eren kissed at them and the pain was gone. The sun had taken its toll on Erwin’s skin too, careful to remind him just how quickly sunscreen washes away. He held onto Eren even as he climbed the ladder to his boat, his hand tightly clenched around Eren’s. He couldn’t lace their fingers together with the webbing between Eren’s, but that wasn’t going to make him let go any time soon. He placed little kisses on Eren’s hand as he ascended, promising to return. Eren didn’t even need to hear it. He always promised to return. Erwin was certain he wouldn’t ever break his promises.

“I’ll go to Hanji’s tomorrow after work, I promise.” He said the words like a sacred oath. “I’ll bring dinner so our friend doesn’t hate us for using the house as our rendezvous point.”

He only let go of Eren’s hand when he absolutely had to.

***

Erwin dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to cure them of the oncoming soreness from staring at his computer screen for hours reviewing case files. He felt his desk tilt slightly as someone sat on it, and they spoke before he’d even opened his eyes.

“So you’ve found it?”

Petra’s cheery voice was enough to make him open his eyes. Aside from Eren, her sincerity had become one of his favorite things.

“Found what?” He went back to his computer, pretending to ignore her. He knew his sly smile would give him away.

“You know. Whatever you were looking for. Is it a person? Have you found ‘the one’?” She gave him a teasing nudge with her elbow for the last two words.

Erwin hummed indifferently, scrolling aimlessly through a block of words.

“Still not sure what you’re talking about, Ms. Ral.”

She smacked his shoulder with a manila folder.

“Erwin Smith, are you gonna tell me or not?”

Giving up on his act, Erwin turned to face her with a grin.

“Nope.” He watched her pout.

“Why not?” She whined. In the two months since he’d started visiting Eren again in early April, they’d become closer. He liked her company, and couldn’t visit Eren during his lunch break, so he often ate with her to pass the time. Respectfully, she’d been avoiding the elephant in the room that was his sudden change in behavior--the second one, since his first had been sulking over Eren--but he could tell it was getting under her skin that he hadn’t told her yet.

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I did.” He stood up and cleared his throat lightly. “I have to use the bathroom.”

He tried to brush past her but she grabbed his jacket sleeve.

“What, I’m not gonna believe that you fell in love?” Her grip was light and he pulled away, still grinning. “Hey! Erwin!” He heard her make a little growling noise as he walked away. “I’m gonna get it out of you at lunch, you know!”

She was true to her word.

“Erwin.” She nudged him with an elbow again, a mouthful of sandwich lodged in her cheek. “Tell me…”

He stuck a forkful of lettuce in his mouth.

“Mmf.”

“What the hell could it be that I won’t believe you? It’s not like he’s a centaur or something.”

Erwin swallowed prematurely and choked on his salad. He coughed until his throat was clear again and chugged some water. Petra gave him a look that told him he was being overly dramatic.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that!” He hoped he sounded sincere enough.

“Stop beating around the bush. It’s not like I’m going to be telling anyone anyway.”

He searched her face for any signs of dishonesty. Her sincerity held; he knew it would. He cracked.

“Alright, alright. I...met someone.” He shrugged.

“Erwin,” she shook her head, mildly disappointed. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

“It’s kinda complicated.”

“Complicated how? He lives in Alaska? He’s married with kids? He’s a prostitute with a high fee and a terrifying pimp?”

“What? No, props for creativity though.” He watched her smile in thanks. “We’re just...from different worlds.”

“Different worlds? How?”

“That, I can’t really explain. And it’s also the part you wouldn’t believe if I tried.”

“Try me.” She crossed her arms, but Erwin sighed.

“I really can’t.”

She examined him for a moment, then let her arms drop.

“Alright, Erwin. I’m glad you’re happy.”

***

Walking into the store and buying scuba gear was the easy part. The hard part came when the clerk steered him away from trying to use it without really knowing how. Diving, he explained, was incredibly dangerous, especially out in the open. Erwin saw the guy bust a gasket when he revealed that he’d be, for all human intents and purposes, alone. He went on to lecture Erwin about the death rate of inexperienced scuba divers to such an extent that Erwin caved and signed up for classes. He trusted Eren with his life, but he was flighty, to say the least, and Erwin didn’t want him to get caught up in the idea of being underwater together and forget that he actually needs to breathe, should something happen to his gear.

Getting through the classes was torment. The first was just a lecture, going into more depth on what the sales clerk had told him. Not getting to tell Eren he’d be underwater for an extended period of time was even worse. He couldn’t bring himself to even tell him he’d bought the gear. He didn’t want Eren wandering too close while the instructor lead the class through the basics. Most of his classmates were tourists on a long stay for the summer, and Eren could swim ten times faster than any of them, but still, the idea of accidentally making San Francisco into a mermaid tourist attraction wasn’t appealing.

He got through his classes slowly but surely, and when he returned to buy a second oxygen tank, the clerk at least seemed satisfied, though Erwin told him he’d found a group to go with. He’d been exhausting himself for days, trying to fit in all of his classes with work. He hated spending all of his free time away from Eren, hated having to lie to him about being assigned a particularly grueling set of cases that took up his time for the few weekends the class had taken. He tried to make it up to Eren by going to the bay, or at least to Hanji’s every day, and as a result, he’d gotten scarcely any sleep. He took an entire Saturday just to sleep. He didn’t even lie to Eren about that one. At the least, he’d finished his classes and was able to spend Sunday with Eren before he had to go back to work. He waited the following weekend for the big reveal.

The day arrived, the boat was anchored in its usual spot, and Erwin tugged on his wetsuit while he waited impatiently for Eren to show up. The June air was only mildly uncomfortable, but Erwin was used to it and his discomfort came from his wetsuit. Not being able to contact him directly was excruciating. Hanji had considered finding some sort of waterproof cellphone, or even just a pager, but Eren had broken all of them in the past by diving deeper than the pressure would allow, or simply losing them and Hanji had given up since their signal ranges were usually too short anyway.

When Eren finally surfaced, he looked indescribably apologetic and had only a few fish to offer in compensation (though they were Erwin’s favorite kind). He threw them onto the boat, still alive, and Erwin had to wait for them to stop flopping around before he could put them in the ice chest which he’d learned to keep stocked, since drinking seawater wasn’t much fun.

“What are you wearing?” Eren seemed to have finally noticed the wetsuit and Erwin simply smiled at him mysteriously and held up a finger while he pulled on the goggles and oxygen pack. He leapt over the side of the boat without bothering with the ladder. Eren was too confused to try to kiss him.

He resurfaced because Eren was waiting for him to come back up, apparently completely unsure of what Erwin was doing.

“What’s this?” He poked at the oxygen tanks on Erwin’s back. He let go of Erwin and swam around to get a better look, then disappeared under the water. Erwin felt a tug on each of his fins and kicked lightly when Eren tried to take one off of his feet. He resurfaced with a giggle. “You have little tails on your feet.”

“It’s scuba gear. You wanted me to scuba dive with you, remember? Don’t tell me you’ve never actually seen scuba gear before?” He pushed his goggled onto his forehead and wrapped his arms around Eren, who was still looking at the whole setup as if it were space-age technology.

“No. Mike won’t let Hanji try. Dangerous?”

Erwin pictured scatterbrained Hanji trying to scuba dive and inevitably forgetting something important because of the distractions at the bottom of the ocean. He found himself silently agreeing with Mike.

“I took classes, don’t worry.” He kissed Eren tenderly. “I had to lie to you, I’m sorry. That’s where my weekends went. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Eren scrunched up his forehead, but looked at Erwin’s oxygen tanks again and his features softened.

“You can stay under?”

“Until I run out of oxygen, yeah.” He nodded.

Eren beamed and kissed him. He tugged on Erwin’s hand, nearly taking him underwater before he’d put his gear back on.

“Hold on, hold on,” he laughed, resisting Eren’s strength so he could pull on his goggles and position his mouthpiece. Eren splashed at him impatiently and plunged him under as soon as Erwin stopped messing with his gear.

Under the waves, Erwin got to see the breathtaking dream world Eren lived in. Unlike when he had nearly drowned, the shallower water where they were was an enchanting green, and not the curtains of blue he was certain were to be the last thing he ever saw. As Eren tugged him along, it was easy to see how he’d had no problem pulling Erwin back to the surface, even with a weight around his ankles. Eren had never even told him when he managed to get the weight off, but Eren pulled him toward a rock and pointed, giving him his answer.

Near its base in the sand, the weight sat with its chain coiled around it, already gathering algae from three months ago when Eren had pried it off of him. He gave Eren’s hand a squeeze and made a mental note to ask about the rescue later.

He couldn’t keep up with Eren. Even with the plastic fins on his feet, his legs were no match for Eren’s tail, and Eren quite literally swam circles around him. Watching Eren move was a sight in itself. He darted about with such fluidity and grace that Erwin stopped several times to just drift along and watch him swim. His tail moved in powerful, undulating motions, the fins on the sides of it opening and closing for him to change direction or stop. When he stopped, he would hang suspended by his own buoyancy and the frills on his head would extend. He’d look at Erwin questioningly for a split second, and then break into an ear-to-ear grin. His tail and fins just matched the color of the shallow, green sea, the color of his eyes. Of all the beauty at the bottom of the ocean, Eren reigned supreme.

He kept a constant monitor of his oxygen levels, trying to keep Eren from distracting him. It was slightly different being with Eren in his own world where they could touch but not speak. He could kiss Eren, but only carefully, since he couldn’t breathe at the same time. Eren never held him for long, flitting about and eagerly pointing out the furnishings of his world. Erwin was content to watch him buzz around. Every now and then, he made strange chattering noises that Erwin assumed to be his language, but he stopped himself every time, remembering that Erwin couldn’t understand him.

They swam for what felt like hours, and had gone so far that Erwin didn’t have the stamina to make it back and had to stop so frequently that Eren made him loop his arms around his neck and swam back with Erwin on his back. Erwin had to keep adjusting himself so that the fin in the center of Eren’s spine wouldn’t jab him in the stomach.

When they made it back to Erwin’s boat, he threw his scuba gear on board and swam lazily over to a large, flat rock, where he unzipped his wetsuit and flopped onto his back. His feet hung over the edge into the water, but he was too tired to care. His thighs burned from trying to keep up with Eren. He felt a familiar tickle at his submerged feet, but couldn’t summon the energy to resist. After a while, Eren gave up on the alluring toes and swam around to Erwin’s face.

“Tired?”

Erwin nodded, his eyes closed. He heard the water move around Eren as he propped himself up on the rock, his elbows just inches from Erwin’s face.

“Poor Erwin.” Eren nuzzled his nose against Erwin’s forehead and left a light kiss there. Erwin responded with a groan. He opened his eyes and found himself staring straight into Eren’s. He blinked sleepily for a moment.

“Your eyes match the sea perfectly,” he murmured.

“Your eyes match the sky.”

Erwin opened his all the way and rolled onto his side. He tilted his head slightly as he pushed his chin forward to kiss Eren. Their mouths met lightly and Erwin sighed into the kiss. He set an elbow underneath himself and brought his other hand to Eren’s cheek. When they pulled apart, Erwin kissed the tip of Eren’s nose.

“You mean so much to me,” he breathed. “You brought color to my world.”

Eren’s expression melted and he kissed Erwin forcefully and Erwin knew the kiss took the place of the words that had failed him.

He kissed Eren until he was certain he’d have to leave or he’d fall asleep somewhere between driving the boat back to the dock or driving back to his house.

As Eren waved to him from the water, he caught a last glimpse of the green of his eyes in the diminishing light of the setting sun. The sun set on the two of them, a last band of orange and pink between the soft, hushing, green sea and the stark, distant, blue sky. When it had gone, it almost seemed as if the two worlds were one.

***

Day three. He’d gotten his strength back after the second day and sitting around getting stared at by Eren was only making him antsy. He could only keep up conversation for so long. He needed to get back to work . All Eren wanted to talk about was his toes anyway, and Erwin had learned that there’s only so much you can say about toes. Every now and then, Eren would say something and Erwin would grunt in response, but after a few hours, he’d given up. Erwin wondered why the kid didn’t just leave.

A click at the top of the stairs made him rocket upwards so he sat up straight. Three days. He’d been locked in the strange basement room for three days and it wasn’t getting any better. The first two days weren’t bad; Eren had proved entertaining the first day, and Hanji had at least let him roam about the upper floor of the house the second (briefly), but the captain had gone out again and Erwin wasn’t in the mood to talk about his feet. The click of the lock meant there was something else to do other than sitting around ignoring Eren’s incessant staring.

“Hanji!” Erwin stood up. He’d re-roof Hanji’s house if it meant having something to do. Maybe that would at least get Hanji to trust him and finally let him leave. The person who opened the door, however, was not Hanji.

“Mike!” Eren splashed about excitedly and the man who’d opened the door came down the stairs with something that almost could’ve been a smile.

“You’re Erwin?” He grunted, jerking his chin up slightly. Erwin nodded slowly. Behind him, Eren continued to splash around, bouncing about like a dog greeting its owner after they’ve been away for the day.

The man approached Erwin calmly, then leaned in entirely too close and inhaled. Erwin leaned away accordingly, not exactly fond of being sniffed by strangers, and after a moment, the man retreated back into his own space, looking mildly dissatisfied. He grunted, then stuck out a hand.

“Name’s Mike.”

Erwin shook it brusquely without a word, and Mike let go to go greet Eren. He knelt at the edge of the pool and ruffled Eren’s hair. Erwin wondered offhandedly if it were soft or if the sea had conditioned it into coarseness.

“We’re going out on the boat today,” Mike said, though it was difficult to tell who it was directed at until he looked at Erwin. “Hanji wants you to come along. Figures you’d be cooped up by now.”

Erwin nodded quickly in agreement. Mike crossed the room and pulled something out of the drawer, then tossed it to Erwin, who examined it curiously. A swimsuit?

“I trust it’ll fit. I don’t need it today.” His eyes went over Erwin again. “Everything else seems to.”

It clicked for Erwin that the clothes he was borrowing belonged to Mike, which explained why they were a little too big considering his height, but the thought made him uncomfortable given the man’s mannerism. It took him a moment to gather himself and reply.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

The trio drove the boat out into what seemed like the middle of nowhere. By California’s standards, the weather was warm, even for March, but Erwin was glad for the sun after being stuck in what was, for all intents and purposes, a dimly-lit cave for three days. Hanji pranced about in a shapeless t-shirt and some swim trunks, hands tightly holding onto a stark-white captain’s hat while chittering about it, even though Mike was the one driving the boat. They finally stopped and dropped anchor, and it didn’t take long for Eren’s little head to break the water.

Certain that the boat was motionless, Hanji leapt over the side with a “Yahoo!” and an impressive splash followed for someone so small. Mike grunted, pulled off the shirt he was wearing and sensibly climbed down the ladder after the captain. From the boat, Erwin could hear Hanji calling him.

“Come on, grumpy!”

Erwin peered over the side of the boat, half-smiling.

“I’m alright up here.”

He’d be lying if he said nearly drowning a few days ago hadn’t turned him off swimming for awhile. He watched Eren swim over to Hanji and whisper something into the mariner’s ear. Hanji nodded understandably.

“We’ve got floaties if you can’t swim! C’mon! The water’s great.”

“No, I can swim just fine. It’s just, well, I almost drowned three days ago, so I’m not really in a swimming mood.”

“C’mon! Please?” Hanji tried something along the lines of batting their eyes, but it came out as really fast blinking.

“Please?” Eren echoed.

Erwin shook his head.

“Ooh, Eren!” Hanji hit his arm lightly. “Do the thing! Maybe that’ll make him come in!”

Eren nodded and disappeared under the water. Hanji and Mike quietly swam away from one another, widening a space between them. A moment of silence passed, anticipation building. Eren resurfaced in a burst of white water and just kept going, leaving the water completely. Erwin’s breath caught in his throat. The sunlight glittered off the scales of Eren’s tail, throwing the light in every direction as Eren dived backwards. He fell back in a perfect arch, his hands pointed over his head. His fingertips cut through the water and the rest of him followed, disappearing into the water without the slightest ripple. Eren popped back up beaming.

Erwin took a moment to gather himself and cleared his throat.

“That was impressive, but I’d still rather stay up here.”

“You’re no fun!” Hanji called, but Mike seized the captain’s attention with a splash and the two got caught up in a splash fight. Eren continued to stare up at Erwin, looking disappointed.

“Please?” He tried again, weakly.

One word. That’s all it took. It was just one word, and it was just for him. No one else heard it. He wouldn’t even admit it to himself. The way Eren was looking at him, utterly hurt that the best of his efforts had done nothing to change his mind--Erwin couldn’t stand it. He sighed deeply and joined them in the water. At least with Eren there, he wouldn’t have to worry about drowning.

The day was too long, and he fell asleep nearly as quickly as he had on the first night. He hadn’t even noticed himself falling asleep. After he’d showered, he’d figured he would just stay up talking with Hanji and Mike, but they’d given him a beer and while it hadn’t been enough to even make him tipsy, it’d put him straight to sleep and by the time he woke up, Hanji and Mike were gone. Eren wasn’t.

It was Eren who woke him up. He was suspended over the edge of the pool, head on his arms with his strange natural buoyancy leveling his back with the water, but he was very clearly still asleep. Erwin woke because in his sleep, Eren whimpered softly, his fingers twitching. He thought it would stop, something about reading an article that said nightmares only last about nine seconds, but after several, Eren was still whimpering quietly.

Erwin got out of his cot and went to sit down by the edge of the pool. He set a hand on Eren’s shoulder and shook him lightly until Eren’s head snapped up on its own. He looked around, terrified and bewildered.

“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just a nightmare.”

His hand was still on Eren’s shoulder.

Eren seemed to actually see him when he blinked and looked around again. His face fell into something like relief and anguish mixed together and he buried his face into Erwin’s knee, grabbing his hand with the one adjacent to the shoulder Erwin had his hand on. Eren squeezed and Erwin set his other hand on Eren’s head. As messy and sea-weathered as Eren’s hair was, it was soft and smooth.

“Erwin,” Eren whined, squishing his face against Erwin’s knee again. It was all he could reach, but the damage was done.

At that moment, at least, Erwin admitted it to himself.

***

He met Eren out on the waters again the next day, even though his legs screamed at him to stay home in bed. He couldn’t stay away from Eren if he wanted to. When Eren plucked him off the ladder like he usually did, Erwin stayed behind for a moment after their underwater kiss, his legs kicking feebly as he tried to resurface. He made it, but only with his arms.

Eren frowned and looped an arm around Erwin’s chest then dragged him to a rock and sat him on it precariously. Erwin adjusted himself so that he could sit without nearly falling off, but he was still submerged up to his shoulders. He thought about climbing up onto the rock behind him, but his thighs were not on board with that.

“No wetsuit?” Eren asked, looking concerned. Erwin laughed.

“Eren, sweetheart, I can’t hardly swim right now. My thighs are killin’ me.”

Eren gave him a pouty face but swam up and clasped his hands together behind Erwin’s neck. He hung there with his nose against Erwin’s, having dodged a kiss Erwin thought he was getting, and Erwin let his hands rest on Eren’s back, idly playing with his fin.

“Humans are weak,” he mumbled, nuzzling their noses.

“Only in the water. I’d like to see you run a mile.”

“I don’t have feet.”

“Exactly. I win.”

Eren pulled away for a moment and his eyes flicked over Erwin’s face, darting and rapid. He looked at him quietly for a minute before Erwin got suspicious.

“What? You’re not gonna drown me, are you? Because th--”

Eren leaned in suddenly, without notice. His arms tightened around Erwin’s neck as he kissed him with a crushing force. Confused, but definitely for it, Erwin leaned into the kiss, softening it and calming Eren’s erratic movements. He tried to slow it into their normal soft, relaxed kisses, but Eren wouldn’t follow, meeting Erwin’s soft motions with fierce, driving ones. The wild kissing made Erwin hyper-aware of everything, and Eren’s placement between his knees from earlier when he had pulled himself so close suddenly became quite significant. He matched Eren’s starving motions without meaning to.

A gasp escaped him as Eren abandoned his lips and brought his mouth down on Erwin’s neck.

“Eren,” he cautioned, taking note of the fact that Eren’s hands were on his chest.

Eren nipped at his neck and made Erwin shiver slightly. His fingers dug into Eren’s back as he marveled at how skillful he was for as innocent as he seemed. For a moment, he let himself enjoy it. He froze when Eren’s hand pressed into his crotch, seizing the foreign limb immediately.

“Eren.” He held the hand away from himself and Eren came away from his neck. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing right now?”

“Yes.” He tried to go back at Erwin’s neck, but Erwin had a second hand to stop him.

“I’m serious. This isn’t like a kiss or a hug. When humans do stuff like this, it means a lot.”

“I know,” Eren replied simply. He eased in to kiss Erwin’s ear, where he whispered, “To me, you mean a lot.”

Erwin didn’t stop him went he went for his neck again. After a moment, he let go of Eren’s hand. Eren moved his hand again, grinding into Erwin, who was already half-hard. Erwin let out a short grunt at the friction, keeping his hands steadily on Eren’s back while the hand between his legs rubbed slowly, teasing him. For a split second, the pressure disappeared, but Eren’s fingers in the waistband of his swim trunks had the explanation. Erwin lifted his hips to the sudden direct contact and inhaled sharply.

“God, Eren,” he breathed and Eren responded by moving away from his neck, slowly down his torso in a trail of kisses. Where his lips touched his skin under the water seemed all the more electrifying. Skilled hands pulled the waistband down over his hips as he bucked up again, exposing him. He could’ve cared less about the rock under his bare ass; it was at least smooth enough that it didn’t bother him. The only thing on his mind was Eren’s hand around his shaft, slowly pumping up and down. He drew in a shaky breath.

He jumped when he felt Eren’s lips on the side of his dick, softly mouthing at the shaft while his tongue traced little patterns there. His hand moved away as his mouth moved up, lips kneading at the sensitive tip. Erwin jerked with every motion and dug his nails into Eren’s back as his lips parted and Erwin felt himself slide into Eren’s mouth.

“Shit,” he hissed, looking down.

Eren’s hair floated around him like a halo, but in billowing tendrils that moved whenever he bobbed his head. Erwin dug a hand into Eren’s hair, prompting Eren to look up at him curiously, catch the look on his face, then give a devious grin and plunge down again. Erwin couldn’t help pushing Eren’s head down, and to his surprise, Eren let him keep pushing. He didn’t seem to be gagging at all and Erwin realized he didn’t need his throat to breathe underwater. He pushed until Eren placed a hand on his thigh--breathing or not, his throat could only open so wide--and then let go, letting Eren take control again. Erwin kept his hand in place and bit down on his lip, giving small thrusts whenever Eren came down.

Erwin felt his muscles start to jerk and he knew he wouldn’t last much longer. To his surprise, Eren slowed his pace and replaced his mouth with a hand, then came out of the water to give Erwin a salty, prying kiss before moving over to one of his ears.

“Am I good?” He whispered, his lips brushing the shell of the ear. Erwin groaned and bucked into Eren’s hand. Eren kissed him again, softer, and then disappeared back under the water.

When he put his mouth back on Erwin’s cock, he knew it was over, Eren’s newfound vigor aside. He clutched at Eren’s head and dug his heels into the rock under him.

“Fuck, Eren.” He threw his head back against the rock and felt his muscles tense again. His breath came in shuddering bursts and he pulled at Eren’s hair as he felt himself give one final spasm before a wave of electric bliss washed over every cell in his body. He grunted, and underwater, Eren continued to lap at him. He was still going when the wave passed and Erwin had to pull him off.

“Shit, Eren,” he panted when he had him back at the surface where he was sure Eren could hear him. He took a moment to catch his breath and then tugged his swim trunks back up with one hand while Eren wrapped his arms around Erwin’s chest and rested his head there. “Shit. You can’t just keep going. I have a limit, you know.”

Eren laughed and squeezed him.

“I did good?”

“You’re amazing.”

He placed his arms around Eren, who wiggled up to where he could put his head on Erwin’s shoulder and brought himself to where he could sit on his lap. It didn’t take Erwin long to fall asleep once he rested his chin on Eren’s head. When he woke up, he was so confused he startled Eren out of his lap. He frowned at his pruney fingers and Eren sighed.

“You have to go back?”

“Or risk becoming a raisin, yeah.”

“What’s a raisin?” Eren cocked his head.

“Raisins are what happens to humans when they stay in water for too long!” He wiggled his wrinkled fingers in Eren’s face and watched his eyes get wide. Eren grabbed him and shot across the water, practically throwing him back on the boat.

“So eager to get rid of me?” He laughed, toweling himself off.

“I don’t want you to be a raisin!” Eren looked near tears.

“Relax, I’m not gonna become a raisin. I was just kidding. Raisins are food. They’re dried-up grapes and they’re wrinkly like what happens when humans stay in water for a long time.”

“You’re mean,” Eren pouted.

Erwin climbed back down the ladder so that he was up to his knees in the water.

“But I should be heading back now. Do I get a goodbye kiss?”

Eren turned his head away, nose in the air.

“Please?”

Eren harrumphed.

“Eren,” Erwin sang, and Eren looked over his shoulder. “Please?”

Eren huffed and dropped his shoulders, then swung his arms around Erwin’s neck and pulled himself for a kiss. Erwin held him with one arm, the other precariously holding onto the ladder. He breathed into the kiss and smiled. The sun was just setting and the sky was a palette of oranges and pinks painted across the horizon. Beautiful colors. This world was not the grayscale world of Erwin Smith, single, thirty-year-old, attorney at law. This was the world of someone with something to live for.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he called from the deck when he’d torn himself away from Eren.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lul idk this is just a bunch of fluff but rovy wanted an underwater bj (BLOGJOBS pfft) so that's what happened. BGKOW.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing changes you quite like love.
> 
> * * *

July evaporated in a blur of immense heat in which even Eren didn’t want to be up on the surface. He whined whenever he had to be in the sun for too long. They met up as much as they could, whenever they could at Hanji’s house where at least they had shade on their side, but Erwin hated to impose so they met mostly at night when the sun had gone down. It left behind a sticky heat, but it was better than roasting alive. Erwin’s skin was glad for the break. All the sunscreen in the world could only go so far when it came to keeping him from getting sunburned, though the tan he’d worked up certainly helped; Petra had noted long ago, jokingly, that he finally had a little color to him and he’d laughed along knowing she’d never know just how right she was.

Eren didn’t seem to change a bit. Either he had no use for a tan at the bottom of the ocean or he just didn’t get one, being submerged most of the time, but he too had pointed out Erwin’s sun-bronzed skin. It made for a pretty contrast wherever they touched, Eren’s soft, pale skin against the golden hue of Erwin’s. He’d laughed himself into a stupor when he discovered the tan lines left by Erwin’s swim trunks.

While his lack of understanding about the human world was frustrating at times, Erwin could never bring himself to be annoyed with Eren, and his naivete was wholly endearing. He found that Eren wasn’t nearly as misinformed as he’d thought. Twenty years was a long time, and Hanji had dedicated many of them to what would’ve made up for a basic education, up through high school on a human scale. Eren relayed his stories of eagerly learning everything he could, out of mere fascination, noting that his world functioned on conventional wisdom rather than schooling. They had no need for infrastructure or technology, their society too loose for government and too flighty for art. They needed no laws but the laws of nature themselves.

July was, aside from the heat, delightful for both of them. They’d hardly noticed the passage of time until Hanji noted that some five months had passed since Erwin had nearly drowned. Erwin blamed his work. Seconds were hours with Eren, until he had to go home and the time, which had seemed infinite, was miniscule compared to time without him. As a result, he rushed through his work, willing the time to go faster, but Nile took it as an increase in productivity and rewarded Erwin with a promotion and a new, heavier workload. He took it as long as he could stand, though the new title and salary meant nothing to him. But when it became too much, taking over his weekends and making him fall asleep on Eren multiple times, he politely declined, offering to take a demotion. Nile was understanding enough to reduce his workload and gave him Petra as an assistant instead.

Petra was a blessing in disguise in that aspect. She was the only one he could talk to about Eren, though it had circulated through the entire firm that Erwin Smith, infamously cold and independent, was seeing someone. It went without saying that he never mentioned why Eren was so different from him, but Petra never pried, so he was comfortable talking to her about anything. She had her own things going for her anyway, after getting engaged to Aururo, who’d been after her since her intern days. Aururo helped dispel the rumor that Erwin was secretly seeing Petra, since he and Petra were always together when Erwin rocketed out the door to go see Eren, but it also added an air of mystery. The entire firm was dying to know about Erwin Smith’s mystery lover, whom he never talked about whether questioned directly or indirectly, and didn’t bring to the 4th of July Firm Picnic.

Erwin both loved and hated work. Once his workload let up, he remembered why he’d wanted to go into law in the first place, after years of going through the motions, and found himself actually enjoying it. He supposed Eren had something to do with it, but Eren was also the reason he hated work. When he was at work, all he wanted to do was throw his suit in the trash and go out on his boat.

There was no denying that he fell in love with Eren more every day.

***

Whenever Eren tired of the sun or got restless, he’d swim away from Erwin, usually on his rock, burn off some energy in laps or, if he was feeling showy, flips, and disappear under the surface. Erwin could count on hands grabbing at his feet if he had them hanging in the water, which he usually did. Twenty years of knowing Hanji and five months of knowing Erwin were no match for Eren’s indefatigable fascination with toes.

“Do you always have to do that?”

Erwin had rescued his foot from Eren when he’d started nibbling.

“I like toes.” He grinned wickedly and made a grab for Erwin’s other foot.

“Right, but you’ve been around humans for decades. Don’t you get tired of them?”

Watching Eren was its own game. The gleam in his eye as he brought Erwin’s foot to his mouth disappeared, replaced by something of embarrassment. He held on to the foot regardless.

“I did. But not yours.”

“Mine?” Erwin echoed, deciding he could distract Eren’s hands with his own by reaching for them.

Eren hummed.

“They make you human.”

Erwin held on to the hand he’d successfully pried away from his foot, inadvertently squeezing it as his heart swelled. Inherently strange to him, Eren loved toes, but Erwin had never thought the gesture would have any sort of deeper meaning. He’d assumed Hanji and Mike’s toes were equally subject to his scrutinization. He brought Eren’s fingers to his lips.

“Human, huh?” He murmured against them softly. “So _that’s_ why you like me.” He spoke louder, jokingly.

Eren paled and shook his head vigorously.

“No! Not that!” He let go of Erwin’s foot and placed the hand on his knee. From the water, with Erwin still in possession of his other hand, Eren could only reach so much. Despite hunching over to be closer, Eren couldn’t grab Erwin like he wanted to without pulling him in. “Much more,” he added with certainty.

Erwin took the other hand off of his knee, slid himself into the water and looped Eren’s arms around his neck, pulling Eren to him by his waist.

“More?” He prompted.

“You’re human.” Eren paused, trying to find a direction for his words. “But you’re you?”

He gave up with a giggle. Talking still wasn’t Eren’s strong suit. After days of being exposed to the perfect English of his coworkers, sometimes returning to Eren was shocking because Erwin forgot how strange the words sounded in his mouth. He got used to it immediately, but the lack of clarity was always there, almost as if his mouth simply wasn’t shaped for the words. It didn’t help that for decades, his only conversational partner was Hanji, who hardly let anyone get a word in anywhere once the babbling started.

“You’re human, but you’re _my_ human. You’re special. And so are your toes.”

Hearing that, a thought occurred to Erwin. The two had learned to move around one another, so from day to day, they simply existed together, without so much as a second thought. Erwin could scarcely remember the days when he found himself staring at the alienness of Eren’s tail, though it had been particularly striking. So much of his moral being had been opposed to the idea of Eren as something that wasn’t human that he’d left, and only returned because he was miserable beyond caring about what Eren was. He’d assumed that Eren simply loved humans, never found them strange or off-putting, but perhaps he’d been wrong. Perhaps it was equally strange to Eren for Erwin to be human, to walk around on his boat and sit on rocks all day.

He instantly felt ashamed of all the times he’d chosen to ignore what Eren was. It had been easy enough; his frills were always tucked carefully behind his ears (unless he got too excited), gills sealed shut, and tail underwater. With a bit of convincing, Eren was just a human who never left the water. The other details could be overlooked.

Erwin stayed silent for a moment. Clasped behind his neck were little webbed hands with sharp nails. Underneath his hands on Eren’s back was the top of a frill at the base of his spine. Staring at him curiously were a pair of shining eyes, the shape too large and slanted, color too strange to be human. He felt an odd ache in his chest as he wondered if he deserved someone who accepted everything equally strange about him when he could scarcely do it in return.

He kissed Eren with a sudden force. An apology. More hard kisses followed, first fumbling in Eren’s confusion, then equally matched. Erwin kissed him until he knew he would come away smiling.

“You know, for all the fuss you make about my feet, I’ve never really seen your tail.”

Eren’s face was still flushed from Erwin’s unexplained apology. He blinked for a second and left a little kiss on the prominent bridge of Erwin’s nose.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s always in the water, and I’ve seen it a couple times, but not really. But it makes you who you are. Maybe I’ll like it as much as you like my toes.”

“Okay?” Eren furrowed his brow and let go of Erwin, who treaded water for a second before pulling himself back onto the rock.

“C’mon.” He patted the rock beside him.

Eren cocked his head, but sank under the waves a little, then shot out of the water like a bullet, sliding gracefully onto the rock. For a moment, Erwin caught his breath. He’d never seen Eren more than halfway out of the water and seeing all of him at once was strange. It was comparable to seeing him naked for the first time (if but for the way he blushed). He’d always known the parts were there, and he had a pretty good idea of them, but seeing them in context put the whole picture together. Eren positioned himself easily with his arms, remarkably more defined than Erwin could recall. He sat contentedly silent for a moment, just watching Erwin and the exposed expression on his face.

Erwin drank it all in, the translucent, spiny fins on the sides of the tail, the beautiful fan of the fin, the way the scales met Eren’s skin by getting smaller and paler, trailing higher up his hips than in the center. The waning sunlight, glittering off the emerald of the scales, different in this light than it had been when he’d seen Eren leap out of the water for the first time at high noon. With a start, Erwin realized Eren lacked a navel. Hanji had mentioned that his kind most likely had a reproductive system similar to fish since they lacked external sexual organs, but Erwin had never thought about what that meant. Somewhere down the line, eighty years ago, Eren had hatched from an egg, completely without the need for an umbilical cord to sustain him while he grew.

Eren was remarkable.

“Your mouth is open,” Eren giggled, shutting it lightly with fingers underneath Erwin’s chin.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shaking himself. “You’re incredible, Eren. I mean, really, incredible!”

He couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face once the shock had fully worn off.

“Just like toes,” Eren noted. He guided one of Erwin’s hands to the scales.

Underneath his fingers, it felt like one smooth surface, firm and cool, but not slick like he’d expected. The strange, natural oil that kept Eren’s humanlike skin from drying out in the salt and was all over the parts Erwin was used to touching wasn’t on the tail at all. He’d felt the scales brush against his feet and legs in the water before, but it was different getting to feel them out of the water. He skated his hand along the uninterrupted, intricate pattern of tiny scales, feeling how easily his fingers slid along. He didn’t have to lift Eren or his tail to know just how heavy they would be, a mass of streamlined, scaled muscle. No wonder he’d been able to pull Erwin to the surface with a hundred pounds chained to his feet.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Just like toes.”

***

By May, visiting Eren had become all but routine. In his weekly calls, Erwin’s mother had reprimanded him for suddenly buying a boat on a whim--shouldn’t he be trying to save up for a beautiful wedding? A bigger house? His children’s college? But he’d found it to be a worthwhile investment, for a great number of reasons he wouldn’t mention to his mother. He was certain Eren was a greater source of delight than any wedding, house, or child could ever be.

Erwin was quick to scout out a more secluded rendezvous point after meeting Eren in open water a few times and finding it both risky and terrifying. The passage of time hadn’t quite cured him enough to make him comfortable with open water, and he worried constantly that another boater would pass by at any second and see Eren. Hanji helped (out of gratitude for Erwin finally moving his meetings with Eren elsewhere, he was sure) attach a small, flashing red light to the bottom of his boat so that Eren wouldn’t mistake another boat for his. The meeting point in the field of rocks was originally Eren’s idea, since it was rather close to Hanji’s house and he was familiar with it. The memory of waking up half-dead in the middle of all the rocks had been overwhelming at first, but Eren was quick to replace those memories with better ones.

Erwin gradually overcame his deeply-instilled fear of the open water, mostly because Eren loved spending time with him in the water, but also because it took him awhile to trust his boating skills enough to maneuver far enough into the rocks to get to ones suitable for sitting on and he’d had to swim from his boat to the rocks. It was pretty hard for him to hate the water when it brought him so close to Eren. He could float effortlessly in his arms, or let his feet hang in the water with Eren’s head in his lap, and the two could just talk for hours.

“How did you ever end up meeting Hanji anyway?”

Eren was halfway in Erwin’s lap, trying to pretend he wasn’t staring at Erwin’s toes in the water.

“Oh! Yes!” He perked up, tearing himself away from the tantalizing toes. “I was much younger, but Hanji was much, much younger! Ten? Warnings from my kind, no shore, they said, but I still went. A big wave put me in a...tide pool? Stuck. Hanji found me, helped me back. And Mike too! Took a few days though.”

“So you’ve been friends with them ever since? How did you find them after they put you back?”

“Every day I came back. Hanji was on the shore every day, then one day, they swam to me. I found the place with the rocks for us to play, swam there every day. Hanji had books! I learned to speak and read. Friends ever since.”

Eren splashed water over Erwin’s knee playfully. With his webbed fingers, he could scoop up handfuls at a time and wreck havoc however he pleased. For a moment, Erwin just watched, water running over his knee. He set a hand on Eren’s head, brushing over the soft hair idly. Eren looked up at him with round, curious eyes and he just smiled. They were there together in their own little world all because Eren had been too curious and washed up on shore.

Hanji had a slightly different, much longer version of the story, involving an extensive and heroic rescue (which Eren later dismissed), but confirmed being around ten at the time. According to Hanji’s version, Eren had looked to be about fifteen at the time, perhaps the most surprising part of the story. In twenty years, Eren had scarcely aged five. Erwin’d had his own reservations about Eren’s age; he looked like he could be a full ten years younger than him, but in actuality, he’d lived more than twice Erwin’s years. If Erwin died at eighty, Eren would look a sprightly thirty-two. The thought was terrifying.

He brought it up to Hanji once when they were having drinks. Eren had a beer to himself, but it put him to sleep and he snoozed in Erwin’s lap while he and Hanji sat leisurely in Hanji’s basement room, their feet in the pool.

“He doesn’t age,” Erwin murmured, stroking Eren’s hair. “Five years in twenty. That’s one in four. He could live another three hundred before he dies.”

Hanji hummed in agreement, sipping beer.

“It has something to do with the oil of their skin, I think. I haven’t met any full adults, but the amount of oil Eren’s skin produces has increased visibly since we first met, so it might increase as they get older to keep them in the prime of their life for longer.”

“How many _have_ you met, Hanji?” It remained to be seen that Erwin hadn’t met more than Eren himself, and he still found it difficult to imagine at times that there was an entire population of his kind.

“Just three. For a few years, Eren convinced two of his friends, Armin and Mikasa. I taught them to speak too, but they haven’t been around here for years. They all picked their names, you know? Eren has a different name in his language. You can’t pronounce it above the water, but he said it for me underwater once. Mikasa picked hers because it sounded similar to the one in their language. Armin picked his from a book. I told him he should’ve gone with Sawney. Sawney’s a nice name.”

“And Eren?”

“His favorite letters to write were ‘e’, ‘r’, and ‘n’ and he started stringing them together one day and he ‘wrote it out, so it’s actually spelled E-R-E-N, not with an ‘a’. I started calling him by it and it just stuck. Anyway, he, Armin, and Mikasa came together for years, and I got to study them for a long time, but learning about the human world made Armin want to explore and Mikasa never really trusted humans, so she took him to see faraway places and they haven’t come back since. Eren said they came back to the bay, but they haven’t come back to me. They were great to study though.

“They exhibit a phenotypic expression diversity similar to humans--different colors and textures of hair, different eye and skin tones, facial structure, body types, the whole nine yards. The females have breasts like humans, too, so I assume they breastfeed their young, but to this day I’m not sure if they’re mammalian or not. The way they breathe, both air and water, they should be amphibian, but the tails are very specifically fish-like, and they have so many human features it’s astounding. They’re like a class of their own.”

He let Hanji talk on for awhile, simply nodding along. He’d gotten his answer out of Hanji so he just let the marine biologist ramble on. The talk was fascinating enough, entirely about Eren’s species, but much of it was speculation and he tuned it out until Hanji caught his attention again.

“Oh! About the oil of their skin, there’s a significant reason as to why no one’s ever found a mer-body. You’d think when they die they just float up and somebody would’ve found a body by now, but it’s quite the opposite. You see, the oil does wonders for living flesh, keeps the salt from drying them out and keeps them so young--I’ve thought about analyzing its chemical structure and marketing a reproduction as an anti-aging cream of sorts, but it’d be too suspicious. Anyway, it’s great for living skins, cultures of cells that move and interact with it, but it’s incredibly volatile to dead flesh. Eren let me swab some off of him for awhile and I did some experiments.

“On my own skin, it was just like a lotion, except better, and, well, you’ve felt it, but I put it on an uncooked steak and it started to eat away the meat, like an acid. I did some more tests on it, and it turns out that saltwater acts as a catalyst. It can condense and get heavy, so the bodies sink, and then within a few hours, the flesh is completely dissolved. I wish I’d taken more chemistry so I could explain it, but it’s remarkable. It even works on bone!”

It took Erwin a moment to realize Hanji was staring at him.

“You know, you’re in pretty close proximity to Eren.” Eyes flashed. “That means you’ll get a lot of exposure to the oil. It could make for a pretty good experiment…”

“Uh.” Erwin rubbed the back of his neck. He’d gotten the the point where he hardly noticed the abnormal slickness of Eren’s skin, until he accidentally brushed up against someone and found them abnormally dry, but he’d never noticed anything different about his skin as a result. “I doubt that’ll be necessary.”

Hanji stuck out a lip.

“Fine, fine. But if you change your mind…”

Erwin laughed breathily, his attention returning to the fascinating little creature in his lap. It didn’t matter how different they were, not really. There were enough people who would condemn their intimacy for simply being men, let alone any biological differences. Eren wasn’t human, which could reasonably raise an issue of beastiality, but that was fundamentally incorrect. Eren was a functional, highly intelligent, thinking, consenting being, not some horse someone was abusing. Erwin felt it was closer to love between a dog and a wolf; two different species on the same level, but similar enough to understand one another. Just, in his case, with the added benefit of never having to worry about hybrid offspring.

Part of him was slightly disappointed in that realization. He could never be a father with Eren, for biological and moral reasons, and he had no desire to be a parent without someone to share the experience with. He’d never felt particularly called to fatherhood, but part of him had always had an expectation that he would one day grow up and beget (or adopt) children. He would never fulfil his mother’s desire for biological grandchildren--his lack of interest in women and surrogates would make sure of that--but he’d always liked children, at least enough to want to raise them.

Still, children were a mere ornament to a couple’s life, not a summary of their worth. If being with Eren meant he would never have children, so be it. He could feel his certainty weighing in his chest, warm in his lap where Eren slept. He loved him. He’d drown again if it meant he could be with Eren forever.

***

Despite all of the stories about them, from both Eren and Hanji, nothing quite prepared Erwin for meeting more of Eren’s kind. He’d waited patiently, mildly curious while Eren disappeared, wondering if the July air would cool and thin enough for him to breathe normally any time soon. Eren’s tail had gone under the water without a splash and Erwin had smiled to see it go, remembering the feel of it under his fingertips. He vanished for a good ten minutes while Erwin relaxed on his rock, wondering if his boat needed maintenance.

Eren resurfaced unnaturally close to his rock, with an obnoxious splash that rewet the swim trunks that had since dried from Erwin’s easy swim from his boat to the rock. Eren pulled up both hands triumphantly, bringing up an arm for either hand, with the arms’ owners following close behind.

“Hi!” The voice was far less clear than Eren’s and came almost simultaneously as Eren surfaced, quickly enough for Erwin to have no warning. He tumbled backwards, away from the little blond head that had spoken, and Eren’s immensely confused look. Beside those two, slightly behind them, floated a stoic female with jet black hair.

Erwin clutched his chest and laughed as he caught his breath.

“What did I tell you about sneaking up on me? I’m a jumpy old man. You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

“I brought friends!” Eren beamed, propping his elbows up on the rock.

The little blond male nodded enthusiastically and popped a hand out of the water, extending it toward Erwin.

“Armin.” He smiled, his eyes nearly as large as Eren’s, but bright blue. Erwin took the hand and shook it, mindful of the webbing between the thumb and forefinger, which was significantly less complete than the webbing between the other fingers, but still present.

“Nice to meet you.” He turned to the silent one. “And you must be Mikasa?”

The girl nodded, a polite smile tweaking her lips. Her eyes were much smaller, more slanted, and nearly as dark as her hair, but clearly full of intelligence. She was starkly beautiful, and her seclusion made her mysterious. She was a sailor’s dream--at least, were they interested in women, Erwin thought with a chuckle.

“Oh, um, I’m Erwin.”

He brought himself closer to the edge of the rock, curious. The three went under the water for a second, confusing Erwin, then resurfaced. From his perch on the edge, he could see their tails. Mikasa wore nothing on her top half, not that it bothered Erwin, but her tail was an astounding red, not quite enough to look unnatural, but definitely not the soft, watery colors of Eren and Armin’s tails. It broke his theory that tails were the same color as the owner’s eyes, since Armin’s was blue.

“So, I’ve heard a lot about you two, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

The three looked at one another wordlessly and for a moment, Erwin wondered if he’d spoken too fast for Armin and Mikasa, then they went underwater again. Erwin sat in place, his legs crossed in front of him, completely baffled and slightly annoyed because he wasn’t sure what was happening. The three resurfaced and Erwin targeted Eren.

“Alright, what gives?”

Eren blinked.

“English? I’m translating.”

It clicked for Erwin then, of course they had difficulty understanding him; they had four or five to Eren’s twenty, but he couldn’t translate above water. At the sudden clarity, Erwin leaned back nodding slowly and wondering why he hadn’t reached that conclusion before. Eren laughed.

“So Hanji tells me you like to travel. How was that?” He decided to try to continue the conversation normally, come what may.

As expected, the three went underwater again, and when they resurfaced, it was Armin who spoke. Erwin couldn’t help but think what a slow conversation this would be.

“Yes! Travel!” He shaped out the word, looking at Eren for confirmation. “We go very far.”

“And did you like it? Are the oceans different?”

Armin ignored Eren when he went underwater, rolling his eyes up to the sky, decidedly translating for himself. Eren crossed his arms and watched.

“Like very much,” he tried. “Some cold, fish different.”

“The oceans are colder! Different fish!” Eren felt the need to clarify. Armin glared at him.

“Ah, well that’s to be expected. The bay’s always been incredibly warm.”

Habitually, Erwin uncrossed his legs and hung them over the edge of the rock into the water. The action turned out to be a rather grave mistake. Armin took immediate interest in the submerged toes, seeming to forget the conversation and even stoic Mikasa moved forward enough to see the toes. Eren looked on jealously as the two each took a foot for themselves and Erwin laughed heartily. He couldn’t help but compare them to a trio of cats drawn to a laser pointer. He let them play with his feet for a few minutes, somewhat more forcefully than Eren before he rescued one foot and left the other so he could at least try for a conversation.

He was only half successful, talking to Armin for about half an hour with Eren chiming in occasionally, and the two going underwater more often than not while Mikasa enchanted herself with his foot most of the time. She’d resurface for awhile, space out (presumably not understanding the conversation), then go back underwater. The two stayed for what was probably forty-five minutes in total, finding it difficult to relate to someone they couldn’t understand, then left, leaving Erwin with Eren after some brief goodbyes.

“Well they’re lovely,” Erwin noted.

“You think so?”

He’d been half-joking, but Eren’s sincerity made him reconsider.

“Yeah, I really do. I can see why you like them so much.” He pulled his foot out of the water and rubbed it. “Armin’s delightful, and Mikasa’s certainly very...strong.”

Eren smiled brightly, coming to rest on the edge of the rock where Erwin could caress him.

“They liked you. Said you weren’t crazy. Hanji is crazy.”

Erwin laughed louder than necessary.

“Well if Hanji’s the standard, of course I’m normal and likeable--don’t tell them I said that.”

Eren zipped his lips theatrically, smiling all the while. Erwin ruffled his hair and held out his arms.

“Come here. I haven’t kissed you yet.”

***

He couldn’t bring himself to keep secrets anymore. Maybe it was Eren’s brutal honesty, or maybe it was that he just didn’t care anymore. Either way, he found himself wishing he could share Eren with the world. It was a strange feeling; he’d never been a particularly public person, but he felt it more and more every day. Eren had broken the monotony of living a double life: in the closet as a businessman by day, and in a dark, depressed denial by night. He wasn’t so selfish that he would ever reveal Eren’s secret--that wasn’t his business, and it posed a significant threat to his safety. But one day, something in him just snapped.

Petra and Aruro had gotten into the habit of taking him out for drinks or dinner every so often, presumably to make him feel like enough of a third wheel to get him to bring his mysterious lover along, but he couldn’t if he wanted to. He went with them only on the days he hadn’t promised Eren he’d meet him. The two were pleasant company together; Petra’s angelic personality balanced out Aruro’s haughty humor, so Erwin enjoyed going with them. It remained to be seen that Petra was the only one in his private life who knew anything about his sexuality, aside from his aunt who was somewhere in Italy and had been for a time.

“Oi, Erwin, macho man.”Aruro slugged him in the arm, drunker than usual. “When are you gonna bring your pretty little lady with us?”

It was a split-second decision, more of an instinctive reaction than a reply.

“Actually, he’s a man.”

He said it so simply he wasn’t sure if he’d said it at all until he caught the look on Petra’s face. Astonishment. Aruro squinted for a moment in his inebriated state, processing what had just happened, and then broke into raucous laughter.

“Well I’ll be damned!”

Petra had relaxed. Erwin had never even flinched.

He couldn’t believe how overwhelmingly easy it had been.

It became a thing that simply happened. The prying had died down at the firm, but every now and then some brave soul would get the nerve to ask him something, or just drop little hints in casual conversation and he started correcting them.

“Aw, c’mon, Erwin, tell us what she’s like.”

“He’s absolutely wonderful. The apple of my eye.”

And,

“Sure must be nice to have a nice woman waiting for you when you get home, eh?”

“Oh, yes. It’s great being able to go home to him.”

And he gradually worked out the rumors the ‘ _is it really true that Erwin Smith is dating a man?_ ’s and the ‘ _is he really gay_?’s. It was liberating. In a few weeks, he’d firmly established himself and no one had given him any lip about it. He found it almost funny how surprised people were; he’d thought he made for a horrible straight man.

Petra, of course, had to get to the bottom of things, cornering him when they went to lunch while Aruro was busy with a case.

“So, you’re officially out to everyone now?”

“It would seem so.”

That was a lie. There was still one loose end there.

“I’m really proud of you, Erwin. That’s a really big step.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. I just realized one day that I don’t want to have to lie anymore. It’s not fair to anyone, especially not me or Eren.”

“Eren? You’ve never mentioned his name before.”

He hadn’t realized he’d done that either. It didn’t matter anyway. Now that everyone knew, he could give them all the names he could think of. In a way, he was proud of himself. It had only taken him sixteen years to finally stop lying to everyone, but then he was also immensely disappointed in himself. It hardly mattered whether or not anyone knew, not when he couldn’t bring Eren along, show the world his pride and joy. He smiled in spite of himself.

“I should more often. He’s really something.”

“Now that everyone knows, are you finally going to satisfy everyone’s curiosity and bring him to the company events?”

Erwin hesitated.

“I can’t, Petra. It’s got nothing to do with whether or not people know about me. It’s for him.”

“He’s not out yet?”

“Something like that.”

He made the decision that he needed to tie up the loose end on his own. It wasn’t like casually slipping into the truth at work, with ease, taking only a moment to steady himself. It was something different entirely, the most elaborate lie he’d ever spun and maintained, and he’d have to unravel it.

She showed up without warning, though she was wont to do that. He came into his house, lights off as he usually did, but unreasonably late because he’d been out with Eren and had fallen asleep there; Eren hadn’t woken him because he said he was cute when he slept. He hadn’t fought it. They couldn’t ever wake up next to one another, so he took what he could get. Waking up with Eren floating nearby was good enough.

“You’re home late.”

The voice nearly terrified him, coming from the kitchen where his mother sat reading some magazine with articles about anti-aging and organic medicine plastered on the cover. Her reading glasses sat on her nose, an ornament more than anything functional, and she peered at him over them. She had a key to his house, of course. She’d asked for it when he bought the house and he’d given it to her reluctantly, but he had nothing to hide since meeting Eren. She would never come intruding to find them in precarious situations.

“I wasn’t expecting you, mother.”

“That’s the idea.” She smiled smugly and for a moment Erwin wondered where he’d gotten his smile. He’d never seen his father smile, and his mother only smiled when something involved inconveniencing someone for her own sake. He hoped his smiles were nothing like his mother’s. “Were you out?”

“I was. You should’ve called. I could’ve come home.” He wouldn’t have. His phone stayed in his car whenever he went to see Eren.

“No, no. Wouldn’t want to bother you. It’s so late, though, I was expecting you to just bring her home.”

There it was. Her ulterior motive. Her social visits were few and far between, but after his thirtieth birthday, Erwin’s mother was suddenly more interested in his romantic life.

“No, I like the place to myself.”

“I find that hard to believe. What’s her name.”

She said it so that it wasn’t even a question. He watched her for a moment. She’d hardly aged a day, still harshly beautiful with her slender frame, straight and golden locks, and chilling blue eyes. He couldn’t deny that he’d gotten most of his looks from his mother, especially with her cheekbones, but looking at her, he saw nothing of himself.

“It’s Eren,” he managed.

“Erin? How lovely. And when were you going to introduce her to me?”

He sighed. For the first time since he’d graduated law school, he’d seen a flash of pride in her eyes--pride that wasn’t for herself, at least. He watched her quietly for so long that the excitement faded from her face and her mouth began to shape a question, but he cut her off.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time now.”

She eyed him impatiently. She hated when people weren’t direct and concise, he knew that.

“Eren is…” He could feel himself choking on his words. His whole life, all to please her. When she was pleased with him, she loved him. When she wasn’t, she ignored him. He grit his teeth and sucked in a breath. “Eren is a man.”

She stared at him for a moment while he waited for her scrutiny, her rejection. Her mouth hung open slightly, studying him. She shut it abruptly, crossed her arms, and then her face cracked and she broke into laughter.

“Erwin, dearest, that’s a good one. I thought you were serious for a moment.”

He could feel the frown settling into his face.

“I am serious.”

She stopped laughed and straightened herself up, smoothing down her skirt and rising to her feet.

“You’re not. You wouldn’t. You’re not like them. You’re not like _her_.” He could hear the deadly tone in his mother’s voice. Her. She had no fondness for her sister, not in the slightest.

“I know myself, mother. I can assure you that I am. There’s nothing wrong with me or her.”

“You’re just confused, dear. It’ll go away in a little while. You just need to find a nice girl. What about the one you work with, Petra?”

“She’s engaged. I’m not confused, mother. I’m seeing someone.”

“You’re just confused. You’re still young.”

He could hear the insistent tone in her voice, see where her shoulders were raised defensively.

“Mom, I’m thirty. I’m not confused.”

He watched the frown twitch on her face.

“You’re choosing a life of sin, you know that!” His mother wasn’t religious. She hadn’t taken him to church unless it was Easter or Christmas Eve. “Just like her! You’ll never amount to anything.”

“That’s the thing, though.” He could feel the lie unravelling, his patience worn down. “It’s not your choice. It’s never been your choice. And it’s not mine either. I don’t love women, and I never chose that for myself, but I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t need your input, but you have to know. I cannot be the perfect son you always wanted, and part of me is sorry for that, but I know that trying would make me miserable. It sure as hell did for the thirty years I tried. I don’t care if you never accept it, but it’s the truth. Please give up on thinking that I’m going to suddenly decide that I need a wife and children. That’s not who I am.”

She sneered. Her eyes were watering, but he had no sympathy for her. He knew they weren’t tears for him. She was suddenly the rich trophy wife with the gay son, and that’s all that mattered to her. That much was clear.

“You need to listen to me! I’m your mother! You need me!”

It hit him easily, and he said it calmly.

“I don’t need you, mom. I don’t need you to be happy. If you want to ignore it, fine. But I don’t want to make you the villain. You’re not. You’ve got your own ideas and that’s fine, but you can’t make me into what you want me to be anymore. I don’t need you.”

She stood there, exasperated in the middle of his kitchen, her magazine abandoned on the table. The tears had started to run down her face, but Erwin knew she wouldn’t let him comfort her if he tried. He let her cry there for a moment.

“You’ll change your mind! You’ll realize it, just wait. It’s wrong!”

“No, mother. You are.” He said this and he could feel the last of the lie unravel, taking with it the delicate and unhealthy relationship with his mother that he’d never wanted. He watched her shake, scoop up the bag she’d brought with her--planning to stay the night, no doubt--and push past him toward the door without a word. When the door slammed he sighed.

He wouldn’t see her for a long time, he could tell, but it was the last weight lifted off of his chest, once and for all. With a deep breath, he pulled out his phone, scrolled through the names and decided to risk an international call.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Auntie, it’s me. Yeah, I told her.”

***

Maybe his falling-out with his mother had some lasting effects, but some of the patience he’d built up over the last few months had started to dissipate. At work, he was tolerant of everyone until they started to pry again, apparently still unable to believe the things they heard. He didn’t want to deal with them. They were reminiscent of the mother who also wouldn’t believe him and he had no patience for them.

Petra tried to calm him, tried to justify them and resolve everything, but her efforts went largely ignored and began to annoy him like everything else. He had no patience for Hanji’s antics and avoided their calls most of the time, only picking up if he was on his way to see Eren, but that didn’t last. Hanji seemed too cheerily ignorant of the injustice around them, especially for a non-binary. He knew he had to remedy the situation when he started getting angry at Eren.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault any more than it had happened on purpose. It was a simple lack of the ability to communicate. Erwin pulled his boat up to where he normally did and waited patiently for half an hour or so. Eren was a little absent-minded and occasionally forgot what time of day it was at the bottom of the ocean where the sunlight made it harder to tell the time. After an hour, however, his patience had evaporated. He regretted leaving his phone in his car. Even if he wasn’t in the mood for Hanji, he could at least try to call to see if Eren had shown up in the wrong spot.

He waited a full four hours. He swam several laps around his boat, drove around for awhile trying to see if he could find him, not that searching the surface would do him any good, but it was something to do. He was ready to give up and go home after three, but his own terror kept him in place. Eren had never been so late, never not shown up. He kept it at bay. He wouldn’t let himself think things like that. He wouldn’t stay sane if he did. But he could feel them surface and boil over when Eren finally showed up.

“Erwin!” He was too bright and seemingly unaware of how late he was.

Erwin stayed on his boat, arms crossed. When he didn’t say anything, Eren pulled himself up the first few rungs of the ladder.

“Erwin?”

He felt it snap.

“Where the hell have you been? Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”

“I’m sorry, I--”

“No! Eren, you can’t just show up four hours late! That’s not okay!”

“Erwin…”

Eren looked positively apologetic. His lower lip stuck out and he reached for the top of the ladder. Erwin wasn’t done. He stood at the top of the ladder, arms crossed over his chest.

“If you can’t come, you need to tell me, or go tell Hanji or something! You can’t just leave me waiting here!” His voice faltered. “Do you know how worried I was?”

He dropped to his knees and Eren took the opportunity to swing up and grab him by the hand and pull backwards, falling overboard with him. Erwin flailed unexpectedly, the shock of the water hitting him with full force. Eren brought him back to the surface and didn’t even give him a chance to speak before smothering his mouth with a kiss. When he pulled away, Erwin realized he was crying and wiped at his face shamefully. Eren pulled his hand away with a soft and knowing expression. He brushed Erwin’s tears away and pulled him closer.

Erwin choked back a sob as he felt Eren’s chin on his shoulder. He held him tighter while the tears kept coming.

“Goddammit. What am I gonna do if something happens to you?”

Eren planted a kiss on Erwin’s shoulder, which shook with the motion of his sobs.

“I wouldn’t even know.”

Eren pulled back and kissed each of Erwin’s cheeks, shushing him between kisses.

“I’m here now," Eren murmured. "It’s okay.”

Erwin continued to cry, the feeling of Eren’s heartbeat against his chest, the sound of his breathing in his ear. He clutched Eren to himself again, crying harder while Eren stroked his back and whispered in his ear.

“I’m here. I’m here.”

***

Erwin stirred from a dream, panting lightly. He cursed himself and his body as he clambered out of bed, hissing as the cold floor touched his feet. He threw his wet boxers onto the bathroom floor, ignoring the shadows under his eyes as he passed the mirror to turn on the shower. He grimaced as he recalled his dream and pushed the thought from his mind. The time was beyond him; who knew how long he had until he had to go to work. His alarm hadn’t gone off yet. He cursed out loud as he stepped into the shower and scalded himself with the water. He turned it down and ran a hand over his face. Work wouldn’t be any better than his morning, he could just tell.

The heaps of paperwork he’d gotten days before when he returned to work from his excursion of nearly dying and then being captive in some crazy scientist’s mermaid basement hadn’t receded in the slightest, despite hours upon hours of working on them. They continued to come--a punishment from Nile, if he had to bet--and he continued to work through them. For every one he finished, there seemed to be two more. He hadn’t even realized he’d been groaning every time he looked at the stack until Petra came over with a concerned look.

“Erwin, are you alright?”

“Just peachy.”

He shut another file forcefully, dropping it onto his ‘done’ pile so it landed loudly. Petra gazed at the remaining files wearily.

“If something’s going on and you need to talk, I’m here. You were gone for quite a while…”

She trailed off and Erwin looked up at her with his heavily shadowed eyes, wondering if he looked grateful enough for the offer. He hadn’t yet realized that he’d neglected to do his hair when he got out of the shower, and he looked incredibly disheveled to Petra. He hadn’t shaved either.

“You know what, you don’t have to tell me.” She plucked a few files from the pile on his desk, significantly reducing the mass, and left before Erwin could protest.

It didn’t matter. He’d been living the same few days on repeat, and less case files meant less repetition. And he was damned tired. He wouldn’t let his mind wander so far as to linger on the wretched dreams he’d been having. They were somewhere between nightmares and the most inconvenient kinds of dreams, haunted by endless water and a pair of large eyes, green as the sea.

He had to grind his hands into his eye sockets to get the image out of his head.

Giving up on his work, he rose heavily from his chair and headed over to the firm break room, praying for fresh coffee. He wasn’t big on coffee, made him too jittery for all the good it did, but he couldn’t deny needing it. The pot was empty. He groaned and started a new pot. Oh well. At least he’d have a fresh brew.

People moved around him. Someone called his name, miles above his head. He didn’t acknowledge it. If he had to listen to someone ask him what was wrong or where he’d gone one more time he’d tear his hair out. But the voice was insistent, and he looked up and choked on his tongue when he realized it was Nile.

“Oh. Didn’t see you there. Morning, boss.”

“It’s three, Erwin.”

Erwin peered at his watch and flinched. He was right.

“Did you need something?” He watched Nile and added, “sir?”

“You look like death, Smith.”

“I’m sure,” Erwin muttered, craning his neck and trying to see the coffeemaker behind Nile.

“You’ve been catching up on your files quickly, at least. Sixteen in one day, that has to be a record of some sort.”

For a moment, Erwin was confused. He’d only done ten, he was sure of it, but he remembered Petra and vowed to buy her dinner later. As for the record, well, no one ever got more than ten on an average day, so turning in so many before work ended was a notable feat. And he had two hours left to do whatever was left.

“Yes, I’ve been trying to make up for lost time.”

“It’s effective, no doubt. But you still have several to do, and it’ll be a few more days until you get it done, even at this rate. Why don’t you go home for awhile?”

“Home?” Erwin said the word like it was alien to him. Nile clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You look terrible. Sixteen is far more than expected of you, and looking so miserable that the newbies pick up your work isn’t in my agenda for you.” Erwin tried to protest but Nile cut him off. “I know what she did, she’s a sweet girl, and she got all of her own work done first so I don’t mind. To be honest, it’s time to promote her. She’s already bored with her work, so if anything, you’ve proved that for me. But I’d be a terrible boss if I ignored the fact that you look like shit and aren’t even awake enough to make coffee.”

Erwin frowned and looked at the pot. The liquid dripping in was crystal clear. He hadn’t put the grinds in.

“I’m giving Petra the rest of your files for the day so she doesn’t start chewing through her intern shackles.” He chuckled to himself. “Go home.”

Erwin stood isolatedly in the middle of the break room, trying to think of a reason to stay, but nothing came to mind. Another glance at the clear water in the coffee pot shut his gaping mouth. He ducked his head, went back to his desk, grabbed his stuff and went home.

He thought the knots in his chest might go away if he went to sleep, but he lay in his bed drolly, staring up at the ceiling and wondering why he couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, however, there was a pair of green eyes, staring up at him, hopeful, or delighted, or rimmed with red and teary. He fought it off with every ounce of his being.

Wrong.

He screamed the word at himself in his head over and over, but the eyes stayed there, glowing at him just waiting behind his lids. Giving up, he swung his legs out of bed and padded over to his bathroom, then dug through the medicine cabinet until he found what he was looking for. He hoped the pills would at least be enough to keep him from dreaming when they knocked him out.

They weren’t.

***

Normally, he would’ve gotten tired of relatives appearing at his door, but the second he pulled into his driveway--actually noticing the other car this time--he catapulted out of his car incredulously. His eyes were probably still red from crying, and then getting saltwater in them from where Eren had tried to wipe his tears away, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t anywhere near as late as the other night when his mother had shown up, but he felt bad for coming home so late. He was predictable; when he didn’t come home right after work, it would’ve been unusual, but then, his family didn’t know about Eren, save his mother who refused to accept it.

“What are you doing here?” He boomed, sweeping up the little brunette woman reading on his porch bench into a crushing hug. “I thought you were in Italy!”

“Italy? Lord, no! I left Italy a week ago!” She hugged him back with equal force. He let her go and held her away from himself. Her skin had gotten darker, no doubt from the Mediterranean sun, and the wrinkles under her eyes more prominent, but she was smiling so widely, he blamed that instead. He was smiling too. It was their secret. When he was growing up, he’d only been able to smile for her, and he’d never seen her smile for anyone but him or her partner, whenever she had one. At least now he understood. He could share his smile with Eren.

“Come on, come on, let’s go inside.” He unlocked the door and ushered her in, grabbing her bag as she reached for the book that had fallen out of her lap when he’d hugged her. Something by Ayn Rand, a thick, old little brick of a book.

He set her bag in the living room and started for the kitchen so he could put a kettle on the stove. He drank tea about as often as he drank coffee, but he kept a bag of her favorite loose tea in his house at all times.

“So what brings you all the way over here from--where are you living now?”

“San Jose, actually.”

“San Jose? What moved you there?”

“Same thing that brings me here,” she said simply, watching him as he took the tea off of the stove and let it steep. “I thought it would be easier for you if I was closer to you than your mom these days.”

Erwin’s throat tightened. San Jose was definitely closer than Fresno. He tried to laugh it off.

“You moved there within a week? I called you when, Tuesday?”

“It was Sunday. And I actually bought the property before I went to Italy. Call it preemptive instinct. Anyway, after you called me, I figured it’d be safe to stop by for a visit finally. Though I didn’t expect you home so late.” She smiled knowingly.

“Ah--well.”

He looked away to pour her tea.

“So do I get to meet him or what?”

As he handed off the tea and she nodded her thanks, he took a liberated breath. Some of the facial features were there, sure, they _were_ sisters after all, but none of the malicious expression was. The knowledge in her dark eyes was deep, but hardened. There were a great many reasons as to why they understood each other, but among the most formidable was how easily she had asked him. It was as if she knew his mother had let herself in and sat at his table demanding to know ‘her’ name and when they were going to get married and fulfil all the things she wanted for him. He couldn’t blame her, not really, but he wasn’t going to pretend it was reasonable behavior. Not when her sister could sit so calmly, and ask so eagerly.

“Well, no. Probably not. There are some...problems with that.”

“Problems?” She sipped her tea and eyed him warily. “Erwin, have you gotten yourself into trouble?”

“No, no. We’re fine. I just--” he caught his words mid-sentence, stuck on the concern in her eyes. “I’ll ask him, okay? I’ll see what he says.”

“It’s alright if he doesn’t want to. Who’s want to meet an old lesbian like me? Certainly not other old lesbians,” she muttered. “But you love him?”

It took him a moment to reply, and he realized he’d never said it out loud.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Ah, well. You know how I feel about love.” She grimaced, then brightened visibly and smiled as she raised her mug again. “So tell me about him.”

He had no idea he could talk for so long.

She informed him that she’d be staying for a week, if he let her, and he welcomed her to stay as long as she wanted, but it was a Friday, so he still had to go to work. He told he he’d be visiting Eren after work and she waved him off, telling him to stay out as long as he wanted. Before he left for work, he made sure she’d brought a swimsuit with her.

“This might sound crazy,” he’d started, after his long work day, with his feet dangling into the water. “But I actually have someone I want you to meet. She wants to meet you too.”

“Petra?” Eren held onto one leg while the other one swung idly.

“No, not Petra.” He’d mentioned her to Eren a few times, and Eren was all but convinced he had to meet her. “My aunt. She’s in town for now.”

“Not your mom?”

Erwin flinched.

“No, not my mom. I told her about us and she wasn’t very happy about it.”

“You told her that I’m--!” Eren looked terrified for a moment and Erwin patted his head.

“No, of course not. She just...doesn’t like that you’re male.”

“Why wouldn’t she like that?” Eren cocked his head.

It took a moment for it to click that Eren had never even been exposed to the idea of homophobia. Maybe it didn’t matter in his world, where sex was only reproduction and love was the highest form of excellence.

“Listen, Eren, some humans don’t like it when men fall in love with men or women fall in love with other women. They don’t think it’s supposed to happen. You won’t find that very much here in San Francisco, just because there are so many people who are gay, but it’s pretty bad in some places.”

“Oh.”

Erwin saw him testing the word ‘gay’ on his lips, new and foreign.

“So I can meet her? She likes gay?” Eren brightened so quickly he looked slightly ridiculous.

“Only if you want to, yes. And, she _is_ gay, so assumption goes that, yes, she doesn’t have a problem with it.”

Eren let go of his captive leg and rocketed off, splashing obnoxiously as he dove into the water and swam circles. That left everyone but Erwin feeling excited about introducing Eren to humans.

“Before you meet him, there’s something you should know,” he told her on the dock, loosening the rope from his boat. “He’s a tad...abnormal.”

“Abnormal as in he wants us to meet him in the middle of the ocean?” She snorted, stepping on board.

Erwin glanced around at the people on the dock, whom were plentiful, considering it was a Saturday and the weather was lovely. He smiled lightly at her, threw the boat in gear and waited until they were far enough from the dock for anyone to hear.

“He’s--” Erwin gazed off towards the cliffs where they were headed. “Well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She crossed her arms, sitting regally on the seat lining the inside of the boat.

“Try me.”

Erwin laughed, suddenly realizing why he liked Petra so much.

“Just wait,” he assured her.

He could see the confusion on her face when he parked the boat among the rocks and peered into the water. He was hoping he could at least try to explain before Eren came rocketing out of the water, but as soon as he started looking at the water, she joined him and he knew it wouldn’t end well. He saw the dark shape looming underwater before she ever did and turned to try to warn her, but Eren shot out of the water with a splash. He hooked his arms over the edge of the boat and the whole thing sank to one side.

Still standing, Erwin could see the fin of Eren’s tail still in the water, but the rest of his body was devoted to tilting the boat. His aunt, however, was not standing, but was backwards on her rump, frightened away from the edge of the boat by Eren’s entrance. Erwin fought the urge to laugh.

“Hi!” Eren called, slipping slightly as he waved and took his arm from the boat.

“Eren, get down from there. You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

Eren pulled a pouting face and dropped from the edge of the boat so that it rocked back into equilibrium. Erwin offered a hand to his aunt on the bottom of the boat. She seemed at a loss for words. In a familiar motion, she straightened herself, brushing off her lap, and regained her composure.

“So that’s Eren,” she said shakily.

“Hello!” Eren called from the water.

Judging by how calm she was, Erwin was certain she hadn’t seen the best part yet.

“Yes, that would be Eren.” He watched her move to the edge of the boat and nearly stopped her. “Listen, Eren is--”

He couldn’t finish, because Eren decided to leap out of the water again, sure to leave it completely to do his favorite trick. Erwin watched the glint of the sunlight bouncing off Eren’s scales hit his aunt’s face before she stumbled backwards again, landing on a seat rather than the ground.

“Oh, sweet lord, that boy is a mermaid,” she breathed incredulously.

“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.” He reached into his cooler and handed her a water bottle. “Eren!” He called over the edge of the boat. “Come say hi!”

“I already did!” He snapped, and Erwin felt the boat shift as Eren grabbed the ladder. “You told me to get down.”

His little head poked into the gap where the side of the boat allowed for the ladder while Erwin watched his aunt carefully to make sure that she wouldn’t pass out.

“Yes, well.” He tore his eyes away from his aunt to kneel by Eren and tap his nose in a chiding manner. “The ladder is meant to be grabbed. The side of the boat is not.” He turned away again. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She let out a breathy laugh. “Wow, that was a shock, okay.”

“I’m Eren!” He stuck out a hand for her to shake, remarkably close to the floor of the boat, then lost his grip with the other arm and fell into the water again.

Erwin waited for him to resurface, complete with a little pout, then threw off his shirt and cannon-balled into the water after him. Eren caught his head and dunked him under when he came back up.

“You scared her,” he complained, splashing water at Erwin.

“I scared her? I’m not the one with a tail!”

Eren smacked him on the arm and Erwin grabbed him in a headlock and kissed the top of his head. Erwin’s aunt peered over wearily, muttering something about being too old for this shit, and sat herself down at the top of the ladder.

“Come on in! The water’s fine!” Erwin laughed, keeping Eren in his headlock while he squirmed and tried to escape. Erwin gestured to Eren with his free hand. “It’s alright, he doesn’t bite.”

To emphasize the point, Eren bit the hand in front of him.

“Ow. Eren!”

“I’m going to...stay up here for awhile if you don’t mind.” She held on to the bar along the top of the ladder, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. “This is a bit much for me.”

“Uh, yeah.” Erwin let go of Eren’s head and shielded himself from an offending splash. “I’m sure it’s not what you were expecting. Take all the time you need.”

Erwin watched her as she relaxed more, and Eren swam circles around the boat. Erwin caught him after a few.

“Stop doing that. You’re gonna scare her. What are you, a shark?”

“No,” Eren pouted, then leaned in and shot their visitor a few glances over his shoulder. “Does she like me?”

It was meant to be a whisper, but Eren wasn’t very good at quiet.

“Give her a minute,” He assured him, actually whispering. He turned back to his still-quaking aunt. “We’re gonna give you some space and be at that rock over there, so just call us over or swim to us when you’re ready.”

She nodded.

They were alone for fifteen minutes or so before she finally joined them, and when she did, it was tentative. She pulled herself onto the rock immediately, legs tightly to her chest, but as soon as she started talking to Eren, she completely relaxed. Off-putting as he was, Eren was incredibly charismatic, and Erwin could tell that she liked him instantly. She made the mistake of putting her feet in the water and giggled like crazy when Eren went for her toes. She eventually got in the water with him and found swimming with him delightful--it always was. Eren’s natural buoyancy kept him up and he could just hold on to whoever was in the water with him, dragging them along easily. When she asked the inevitable question, Erwin thought he would be prepared, but he absolutely wasn’t.

“How on earth did you meet him?”

Eren stopped for a moment, in the middle of some elaborate braids, and looked at Erwin, wondering if he should answer the question after Erwin stayed silent for a moment.

“He saved my life.”

He couldn’t help the smile that crept onto this face.

Eren started babbling, elaborating on the whole story, while Erwin just watched, suddenly pensive. These moments of clarity and consideration came only after something Eren did or said, always something unexpected, but this was gratitude, retrospect, not clarity. He was alive because of some fluke that had nearly killed him--this wasn’t anything new, but to finally have it off his chest, at least with someone who wasn’t Eren, Hanji, or Mike, was enlightening. His aunt was an outside force, and had never been a part of the happenings, whereas Hanji and Mike hadn’t been in his life until Eren came along. Even Petra didn’t know that Eren had saved his life.

Even if he could never have the two world overlap completely, it was enough just to bring the two ends together. The thought had occurred to him many times, but Eren really was the cohesive element in bringing himself together.

***

By the time August rolled around, hot and sticky as it could ever be, Erwin and Eren were as inseparable as ever. There were mornings when Erwin woke up knowing he didn’t have the energy to fulfil his promise to Eren and see him after work, but Eren seemed to understand as well. Whenever he showed up groggy and moody, sometimes even incredibly late, Eren would back off of chastising him and just sit with him in silence, sometimes while Erwin slept or read (at the risk of wetting his books), holding his hand or his foot or whatever else he could, just to have some contact. That was the most pleasant thing about Eren. Erwin got plenty of space away from him during the day if he needed it, but if it wasn’t enough, Eren was always understanding enough to keep his distance.

Only once did Eren marvel at the idea of children. Among his people, the adults were expected to look after and raise the young as a community, so he’d had enough experience helping with children, but parenthood was something special. Children, he said, were closest to their true parents, especially their mother, even if they could count on the rest of the community to watch over them. He’d expressed a small longing to be a father, and Erwin had explained the many reasons as to why that wasn’t possible between them, and Eren had only sighed. It broke Erwin’s heart enough that he expressly gave Eren permission to have children with his kind if he wanted to, but Eren had only shaken his head with a smile.

“Only one, all our lives.”

He didn’t have to specify what the ‘one’ was.

The conversation, however, brought up the topic of mothers, something Erwin learned was mildly uncomfortable for the both of them. Eren couldn’t fathom the idea of a mother ignoring her one and only child, but he had his fair share of ache from his mother.

“She was...eaten.” His mouth was a hard line, but his eyes were dry and only mildly sorrowful. “It was a shark. Great white, I think? I was very young. Forty years or so. But I saw.”

Erwin reached out a hand to comfort him, but Eren just shook his head, smiling fondly.

“She was a good mom. But it was a long time ago. Still don’t like sharks, though.”

“Well that’s a shame.” Erwin shook his head and Eren gave him a confused look. “Because I’m the worst shark of them all!”

He tackled Eren and knocked him back into the water, biting playfully at his neck. After Eren nearly drowned him--accidentally, of course; there were still occasions that he forgot Erwin needed to breathe--Erwin decided wrestling mermen in their own habitat was a bad idea, and they had gone back to kissing, with a special ‘sorry for almost killing you’ apology from Eren.

August had started to wane away before Erwin realized he’d known Eren for six months. The time had gone so quickly he hadn’t even noticed it passing.

They were forced to abandon their secret little cove after a few boaters started getting increasingly close to the rocks. Erwin met Eren there, then drove his boat into open, but thankfully isolated water. He was glad that the months of being with Eren had made him a strong swimmer and cured him of his fear of open water.

It happened when he was leaving, the sun casting low, orange lights across the sky. Erwin was on the ladder of his boat, halfway in the water and halfway up the rungs. They were out in the open again, scared off by a fisherman, and Erwin was reluctantly saying his goodbyes, his hands on Eren’s face. He squished up his cheeks so that Eren’s lips stuck out.

“There, now you really look like a fish.”

“You’re mean,” Eren slurred through his squished cheeks.

“Maybe, but you know something?” He relaxed his hands, but kept them on Eren’s face. He started again, but hesitated, supplementing the words for a kiss.

“I know something?” Eren mumbled against his mouth, but Erwin was only halfway done with his kiss. He kept their foreheads together when they pulled away, their soft breath in one another’s face. Erwin smiled when he spoke.

“I love you, Eren.”

Eren made a motion to speak, circled his arms in the water and slid out of Erwin’s hands. For a moment, Erwin was certain Eren would resurface in a magnificent leap, as he did whenever he was particularly happy, but he didn’t, and Erwin thought the expression on his face had been one of surprise (that he had expected) but also a sudden fear. And he had slid out of Erwin’s hands so quickly. A plume of red water floated up to the surface and the panic set in.

“Eren!”

He took the biggest breath the panic would allow and dove in after him, searching the dark water and ignoring the burn of the ocean in his eyes. The first thing he could identify was a shred of a green fin before he saw Eren’s arms flailing uselessly as he sank deeper. Erwin shot after him.

_Oh god, it’s a shark. He’s going to get eaten._

He swam deeper, past more shreds of fin, bubbling as they dissolved themselves, to the source of the blood. Desperation set in as he yanked Eren upwards by the hand, kicking as hard as he could. He squinted at the depths, ready to fight off whatever sorry behemoth had ever dare attack Eren, but saw nothing and swam harder. He reached the ladder of his boat with a gasp for breath from both of them, looped an arm under Eren’s and pulled him on board. He couldn’t look, not if he wanted to stay calm enough to function.

“Use the towel to stop the bleeding. Use pressure.” His voice cracked as he revved his engine forcefully and pointed his eyes forward. He’d read somewhere that towels were bad for stopping bleeding, but it was the only thing he had. “I’m gonna get you to Hanji, okay? Take my hand.”

He felt Eren’s fingers lace between his and he floored the gas pedal so hard he thought he’d put a hole in his boat.

“Erwin.” Eren’s voice was bleak and small.

“It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay, just hold on, alright?” He shot the boat toward Hanji’s dock, glad the crazy idiot had built one by the house, and immeasurably glad that they were close.

“Erwin!” Eren’s voice was stronger, this time, more insistent.

“We’re almost there, I promise. Just hold on, please.” He squeezed Eren’s hand and Eren squeezed back, but pulled down twice for attention.

“Erwin! Stop!”

He shook his head.

“We’re almost there!”

“No, look!”

He looked back over his shoulder, saw the blood on his deck and lost his nerve. Eren made an annoyed noise.

“Look! Our hands…”

Erwin peeked at the hand holding Eren’s and suddenly realized what was wrong. He let go of the gas pedal immediately, the boat coasting forward on its own.

“Eren! The webbing between your fingers--!”

“It’s gone!” He pulled Erwin again. “Look!”

Erwin was able to summon the will to ignore the blood and look at Eren where he sat, upright with the towel lain uselessly across his lap. Poking out from underneath it, however, was a pair of little, pale feet. Erwin tore himself away from the wheel completely, nearly giving himself whiplash in the process.

“My god,” he breathed. “You have feet! Eren! You have feet!”

He grabbed Eren in an inescapable grip and swept him off the bottom of the boat, spinning him in a hug while the boat slowed to an idle halt. He set Eren down to look at him, but his new legs crumpled underneath him. The towel, which had been pinned between them, fell back into Eren’s lap as Erwin set him on the ground. Eren lifted it curiously, peering at his legs, but Erwin shooed his hands away.

“Hey! Leave that on!”

Eren gave him a look of annoyance and stuck out his legs in front of himself. Erwin grabbed his discarded shirt from the seat along the sides of the boat and helped Eren into it, smiling at how oversized it was. He held him up while Eren wrapped the towel around himself (at Erwin’s insistence), and Eren tried to stand on his own again, but his legs wobbled and he fell backwards. Erwin helped him to sit on the seat of the boat. Confusion and thrill made his blood pound in his head as Eren held his feet in front of himself, as taken aback as Erwin was.

“Just what the hell happened to you…?”

Erwin knelt by Eren’s feet, taking them gently into his hands and looking them over. Two perfect little feet with the toes all in line and the pads soft from lack of use. Eren wiggled his toes and laughed joyously.

“I have feet!”

He kicked them freely and Erwin smiled so widely he thought his face would freeze that way. When he restarted the boat, there was no haste in it, his fingers laced with Eren’s.

“Come on, we have to get you to Hanji.”

They climbed up from the dock to Hanji’s door in a inexplicable fit of laughter, Eren in Erwin’s arms. Hanji answered the door and seemed to short-circuit, pointing at Eren, then his feet, then Erwin, then Eren’s feet, and yelling incoherently. Erwin had to set Eren down inside and take Hanji aside to get them to calm down. When the mariner stopped screaming, they called Mike right away, and Hanji and Erwin took Eren into the basement room so Hanji could examine him. They cleaned off blood between Eren’s fingers (most of which had washed away or gotten on Erwin’s hands), from the back of his head behind his ears, the center of his spine, and around his waist, but there were no visible injuries. Where his gills had been were three silver lines like scars, but when Eren had sank, he said he hadn’t been able to open them. A new clarity and ease to his speech could be heard. As far as they could tell, there were no remnants of what Eren had been before.

When Hanji started to educated Eren about his new dichotomy--particularly his new excretory system and how to use it, Erwin excused himself from the basement. Mike showed up and Erwin let him in, but was at a loss for words and sent Mike to the basement to see for himself. After a few minutes, Mike brought Eren back up, wearing a pair of pants that were an even worse fit than Erwin’s shirt. Hanji supplemented by gathering some old clothes, since Eren was the same height. After Eren was in clothes that fit him (save for underwear because Hanji didn’t want to give him anything used), the four stared at one another dumbfoundedly for a moment, looking mostly at Eren’s legs. Surprisingly, Mike broke the silence.

“So how exactly did this happen?”

“I don’t know, I was about to leave and he just slipped out of my hands and there was blood everywhere so I panicked and went after him, and when I pulled him up, he had legs.”

He had Hanji and Mike’s attention, trying to go into depth about what happened. No one noticed Eren musing quietly to himself.

“You said you love me.”

After a final examination from Hanji, involving a blood sample which had Erwin muttering about the necessity of such an action to see Eren in pain, they gave the all-clear for Erwin to take Eren home.

Eren delighted in Erwin’s two-bedroom home, pointing out the things that he liked as Erwin carried him around giving him a full tour. The second he set Eren down in the kitchen, he spent every ounce of his energy trying to stand on his own, gripping the table and holding himself steady. Erwin was busily trying to make up for their lack of dinner, despite it being nearly midnight, and didn’t notice until Eren cheered victoriously and let go of the table, tumbling to the ground. He refused to let Erwin help him up. Despite his new legs, weak and uncoordinated, Eren had retained his upper body strength and pulled himself back up with ease. After they had eaten, with Eren providing commentary on how strange the food was in comparison to his bland and simple diet, Eren pulled himself to his feet and stared longingly across the living room.

“Here,” Erwin murmured, coming up behind him and hooking his arms under Eren’s so he could brace himself on them. Eren clung to Erwin and put his leg out shakily, then shifted his weight and breathed in release as he successfully took a step. After a series of fumbling steps, they made it to the bedroom. Habitually, Erwin took off his clothes to change into his pajamas, and Eren hastily followed suit.

The last thing Erwin was expecting when he turned around was Eren sitting shamelessly naked on his bed, but there he was.

“Eren! Put your clothes back on!” Erwin was busily trying to look away, somewhat glad his pajama bottoms were loose.

“They’re itchy,” Eren whined, flopping onto his back. He lifted his head after a second. “You can look. I don’t mind.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Erwin warned, following Eren’s lead in lying on his back.

Their legs hung over the side of the bed, and Eren swung his gleefully, knocking his knees against Erwin’s.

“Hey, guess what,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I have feet!” He kicked Erwin lightly and Erwin propped himself up, looking over Eren.

“Yes, you do.” And his kissed him, soft and slow like he had when he’d been trying to say goodbye. There would be no more of that. He only pulled away when he felt selfish. “Won’t you miss the ocean? That’s where your family is.”

Eren only shook his head.

“Armin and Mikasa can visit at Hanji’s. But you...you’re here. This is where I want to be.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I don’t know how to go back, so I guess I have no choice!” He laughed and kicked his feet again. “They’re gonna play with my toes.”

“Payback.” Erwin grinned. “But me first.”

He swung off the bed and sat at Eren’s feet, his legs tucked under himself. Laughter filled the air as Erwin played with Eren’s feet. He pulled ‘this little piggy’ out of his memory and kissed each of Eren’s toes, nuzzled the arches of his feet while Eren tried to free his feet from the tickling. Erwin managed to dodge a reactive kick and moved his attention upwards, kissing and caressing the soft skin of Eren’s legs. The hair there was thin and pale, but not unpleasant under Erwin’s lips, and he was at Eren’s knees before he realized Eren was hard. Neither said a word, but Erwin smirked and kissed up Eren’s thighs, rubbing them softly and leaving a trail of teasing touches. He hadn’t realized he’d gotten carried away until he heard Eren whimper above him.

“Eren?”

“It...it hurts.” He looked away from his erection, his face bright red.

“Well,” Erwin purred. “I can do something about that.”

New to the sensation, Eren fell to pieces.

He refused to put clothes on afterwards, and Erwin gathered his naked lover in his arms. He couldn’t keep his hands away from Eren. If he stopped touching him, even for a moment, he might just wake up and Eren would be gone.

“Come here, little fish. It’s time for bed.”

Eren snuggled closer and sighed into Erwin’s chest. The warm and breathing little figure in Erwin’s arms wasn’t enough assurance.

“How are you even real?”

Eren’s arms tightened around Erwin’s chest.

“Hey Erwin?”

Erwin hummed.

“About what you said right before I drowned?”

“What?” It took Erwin a moment to remember. “Oh. What about it?”

“I love you too.”

-epilogue-

It took Eren a week to get the hang of walking. As soon as he did, he wouldn’t sit still and Erwin had to chase him around the house like a toddler. He negotiated his way into meeting Petra and Aruro, who found him absolutely charming. He had a little trouble adjusting to some of the social habits--Erwin had to keep Eren from groping him in public more than once--but once he got the hang of things, he fit in just fine. One thing that never died was his incredible fascination with anything new to him, his enthusiasm and joy.

Erwin’s mother came to his house around October, rang the doorbell and tried to apologize, but Eren answered the door, corralled her inside and the two were still talking when Erwin got home from work.

Eren made his debut at the firm’s Halloween party, dressed ironically as a sailor while Erwin went as king Triton, because Eren insisted he pick a character from his favorite disney movie.

It was easy to forget Eren’s true age sometimes with his youthful looks, until he said something uncharacteristically wise and Erwin remembered that he was nearly four times his age. He had a fondness for children far beyond his years, but never talked about it directly. On occasion, he would drop hints, but he never pursued them.

“This house is good for the two of us, but it might be too small for three.”

“I agree.”

Even when March rolled around, Erwin still had difficulty believing Eren was real sometimes. There were mornings when he woke up, expecting to haul off to work, then to his boat so he could see Eren, only to find his little fish curled up under his arm, fast asleep.

Eren loved going back to the ocean. Whenever they had a free weekend, they would take the boat out and watch the sun set. Armin and Mikasa had been surprised and distressed to find that Eren had turned human, but they visited often. Eren couldn’t communicate with them anymore, so they learned English and played together like old friends. They helped Eren learn to swim again, although Erwin served as the resident expert on using legs, and Eren spent as much time with them as possible. His love for them was undeniable, and it broke Erwin’s heart to have taken him away from them.

“You really miss them, don’t you?”

“Sometimes, but I can always go see them again.”

“You know...you’ll get old now. And they won’t.”

Eren hadn’t said anything to that.

“Sometimes I feel like it’s my fault. You could’ve lived to be four hundred.”

But then Eren had smiled.

“Eighty is just fine with me. I’d trade three hundred years in the ocean for sixty here with you any day. After all--”

He’d delivered a soft kiss to Erwin’s lips.

_“Only one, all our lives.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hadskjadkjfadnj this was a pain to finish
> 
> I really hate sharks, if you can't tell...
> 
> Thanks for reading!~


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